Why Atletico Madrid's Rafael Santos Borre Can Star During Villarreal Loan Spell
There are two distinctly different types of loan spells.
In many cases, loan moves become the only viable option for clubs looking to trim both their squads and their wage bills, with players departing for stints that they know they are never truly going to come back from.
Sure, they’ll probably return to their parent club one day, but the changes that will have gone on in their absence will mean that they are no longer needed, and if a club wants to buy them outright then they’ll be off soon. If not, another loan awaits.
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That is the less attractive side of the coin, though.
Fans of the bigger clubs want to believe that the loan spells that their exciting young players embark upon are for everyone’s benefit.
The player gets game-time, his parent club gets to watch him develop and the club he has gone to might well end up inflicting damage on some of their rivals over the course of the season. After all, it is easier to sit in front of the television and cheer for another team if they’ve got one of your players playing for them.
Which brings us to Rafael Santos Borre, Atletico Madrid and Villarreal.
As Diego Simeone takes stock of the squad that are going to lead Atletico into battle in the 2016/17 season, the Colombian forward completed a loan switch to El Madrigal last week—where they were more than happy to welcome a player with a “tremendous eye for goal in the opposing penalty area” and who is “strong, skilful and has a great right-footed strike,” all via the club’s official website.
They are delighted to have him in the Valencian Community, then, and this feels like a lot more than just your average loan move.
The 20-year-old might be being forced to continue his football education elsewhere for while, but it isn’t as if Santos Borre is making that much of a leap. He has moved one place down last season’s La Liga table, and Atletico fans will be keeping a close eye on how he gets on in this campaign, and it won’t just be them who are doing that.
It seems as though Simeone just wasn’t ready to rely on him on a weekly basis right now, but after keeping a close eye on him in training he’ll now be able to study how he gets on over the course of the campaign.
Santos Borre impressed in Atletico’s pre-season programme, according to Marca’s Ainhoa Sanchez. Back in July he wrote: “In the initial days of Los Rojiblancos' pre-season training, the Colombian has impressed with his technique and ability to finish, but he will also have to meet Diego Simeone's physical demands to earn a first team spot.”
He’s only 20, and so those “physical demands” are hardly worth worrying about too much now, but after appearing through Atleti’s pre-season campaign, there is little doubt that the decision to make a temporary move away was the correct one.
That of course comes with a caveat.
Last week Borja Baston—long seen as a player allowed to mature elsewhere before ultimately making the step up to the first team—cut his ties with Atletico after completing a permanent move to the Premier League with Swansea City.
The forward—who ruptured a cruciate ligament minutes into his Atletico debut aged 17 in 2010—embarked on five different loan moves away from the club before the final decision was taken, but four of those five were outside of Spain’s top flight. His level of development was never going to rapidly improve by doing that.
The new Swansea man is also a bigger, more physical specimen than Santos Borre, who perhaps wouldn’t benefit at all from spells in the rougher and readier lower leagues. He’s been thrown in straight to the elite end at Villarreal, and all the signs are that he’ll be able to handle it.
As Bleacher Report’s Karl Matchett wrote on these pages in July, he possesses all of the qualities available to be a success in a passing, pleasing-on-the-eye team such as Villarreal. Matchett wrote:
"A common theme in Santos Borre's movement prior to finding the back of the net is his anticipation of a ball and ability to get across the front of a defender, allowing him to run onto the ball and finish first-time, be it with his head or feet.
He will frequently look to run behind or between centre-backs, especially on the diagonal to provide a through-pass opportunity from midfield, and he is powerful enough in the air to be a constant threat or potential link man—if, in context for Atletico, the likes of [Nico] Gaitan or [Antoine] Griezmann are running off him from the sides of the attack.
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They won’t be doing that for another season at least, but Villarreal have plenty of players who could do.
This is, after all, a team which reached the semi-finals of the Europa League last season and one with a Champions League qualifier to play this week.
Suddenly managed by the ex-Getafe boss Fran Escriba following previous boss Marcelino’s shock departure just days before they start of their Champions League campaign, the Yellow Submarine can boast coveted attacking players such as the ex-Real Madrid winger Denis Cheryshev and the Congolese forward Cedric Bakambu—the second top scorer in last season’s Europa League behind Aritz Aduriz of Athletic Bilbao.
Even more intriguingly, the club have signed the former Milan wonderkid Alexandre Pato following his brief and bizarre loan spell at Chelsea, and it is impossible to look at his recent injury record and the fact that Roberto Soldado is now out for six months with a cruciate ligament injury and not think that Santos Borre is going to get more than his fair share of opportunities this season.
The comparison with Borja is an apt one, but with the type of club he’s joining and with one eye on the fact that this is surely Fernando Torres’ last Atletico season, then you can start to piece together a favourable picture for a youngster who burst onto the scene when scoring 14 goals in 26 games for Deportivo Cali in his homeland, and all as a teenager.
However, loan moves always carry an element of risk, and that is again the case here.
But given Santos Borre’s talent, the club he is joining and the striking situation at that club then Atletico fans have every right to be excited about his development.
And if he can help them get one over on both Barcelona and Real Madrid—teams that Villarreal took four points off last season—then all the better.
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