Diego Simeone Has to Show New Atletico Madrid Attacking Focus Is Fit for Purpose
There aren’t much gentler starts to a new domestic league season than playing a newly promoted team at home, but in many ways, Sunday’s fixture against Alaves places Atletico Madrid in a fairly difficult position.
With four consecutive top-three finishes in La Liga, a league title and two Champions League final appearances in the last four years, Atletico have made their name as a force to be reckoned with under manager Diego Simeone.
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But the average world football fan in the street, the pub or elsewhere feels that they’ve got the measure of the “other” team from the Spanish capital. They think they know what they’re about.
Listen to those people and you’ll hear descriptions of a tough, fairly cynical side who have got as far as they have done through a mixture of grit and determination, but that is almost insulting to one of the more impressive football stories of the past few years.
It isn’t easy to keep on doing what Atletico do, and there is a growing sense that the new La Liga season—which starts on August 19—could be the one in which we see a slightly different Atletico, one that is better equipped to take on Barcelona and Real Madrid at their own games.
In a darkened room somewhere beneath the Vicente Calderon stadium—or probably, and more likely, the club’s Ciudad Deportiva training ground—there would have been plenty of discussions over Atletico’s lack of goals last season, with a tally of 63 in La Liga ensuring that they were down on the previous year’s total for a third year in a row.
If the club want to get closer to their rivals both and home and abroad—which usually turn out to be the same two clubs—then that needs to be rectified in 2016/17, and Simeone has acted accordingly.
In have come Kevin Gameiro from Sevilla and Nicolas Gaitan from Benfica, with both players expected to make their competitive Atletico debuts on Sunday night against Alaves, who are returning to top-flight football for the first time in 10 years.
And all of that means there will be a huge focus on the Calderon, as the Rojiblancos kick off their new season after Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Alaves won’t be an easy game for them, either.
The visitors, managed by the former Valencia boss and Liverpool and Inter Milan assistant manager Mauricio Pellegrino, will set their stall out. They’ll make it difficult for Atletico to break them down and will see a point as manna from heaven on an evening in which no one will expect anything of them.
Those sorts of teams can so often be incredibly frustrating for favourites to dismiss, and it will be up to Atletico to find ways to earn three points, which could turn out to be crucial given how good their rivals are.
It might still be something that Simeone is getting used to, but Atletico need to go on the attack on Sunday evening.
Antoine Griezmann might not play because he’s had no pre-season to speak of since his heroics with France at Euro 2016, but it is up to Simeone to find an attacking structure that will work once he is back and firing on all cylinders.
Much of his success in the summer came when France fielded him slightly behind the less-mobile Olivier Giroud, who might lack pace but wasn’t shy to get physical with the defenders around him, often winning flick-ons and knockdowns and giving Griezmann space to exploit.
Gameiro isn’t quite that type of forward, as he’ll be more interested in also finding space for himself and acting as penalty-box poacher in a team sure to give him chances. Quite how he links up with Griezmann promises to be fascinating viewing, and it could well be what determines whether Atletico stand or fall this season.
Gaitan, too, doesn’t come with any goalscoring guarantees, but he did find the net 11 times in all competitions for Benfica in 2015/16, and he also scored twice in pre-season.
Now 28, he has always seemed destined to take a step up and out of Portuguese football, where he played for six seasons, and now he has, he’ll add a new dimension to a side that suddenly seems full of goals from midfield.
The development of the likes of Saul Niguez and Yannick Ferreira Carrasco will be interesting this season, with both expected to improve on their goals outputs from the last campaign. Saul got eight and Carrasco five, but in among them were some big, important goals that will give them confidence going into the new season.
The key for Atletico and Simeone will, of course, be to add more goals without compromising the one key area in which they have an advantage over Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Jan Oblak’s concession of just 18 goals in 38 games last season was a remarkable feat and matched a 22-year-old record in the division, but the Slovenian stopper would be the first to tell you that it was the work of the defenders and midfielders in front of him that was key to the achievement.
And it is that solidity and steel that makes Atletico uniquely Atletico. There is a sense that they are representing their manager on the pitch, and it shows, often in the face of frustration from their rivals who choose to approach the game in a different way.
No one is saying that Atleti need to be more like Barcelona and Real Madrid—with their stellar six of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale making that nigh on impossible anyway—but Atletico cannot afford another season where their two rival clubs dwarf their goal tally again. Atletico scored 49 fewer Liga goals than Barca last season and 47 fewer than Real Madrid.
That is a chasm that cannot afford to get wider if they hope to topple the top two this time around, and all of that could come to a head when Alaves come to town on Sunday evening.
A convincing attacking display and a good win—with goals from Gameiro and/or Gaitan to sweeten the deal—would be hugely welcomed, particularly if Barcelona and Real Madrid, who host Real Betis and go to Real Sociedad, respectively, have won as well.
It would be a huge surprise if Atletico abandoned their beliefs and the system that Simeone has set up entirely in this new campaign, but Sunday night offers up an opportunity to lay down a marker and to indicate to their rivals that this team is a slightly different animal this season.
Win, and win well, and alarm bells could start ringing at both the Camp Nou and the Santiago Bernabeu.
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