Both Las Palmas Victory and Winter Break Are Now so Crucial for Atletico Madrid

Few top-flight sides in Europe needed a win as much as Atletico Madrid on Saturday.

The miserable 3-0 loss at Villarreal on Monday would still have been uppermost in the minds of the fans who gathered at the Vicente Calderon to see their side take on Las Palmas.

Atletico had gone three games without scoring and hadn’t found the net in a league game on their own ground since Yannick Ferreira Carrasco’s second goal of his brace in the 4-2 win over Malaga at the end of October. 

Antoine Griezmann, their usual source of goals, has been misfiring of late, and there has been widespread uneasiness as Diego Simeone’s side have lurched from one underwhelming result to another.

In those circumstances you just need a win, any win. Three points can cure plenty of ills for a short time at least, and so it proved to be thanks to Saul Niguez.

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It wasn’t quite “cometh the hour, cometh the man” with the midfielder’s goal coming in the 59th minute, but the youth-team product’s fine strike secured a 1-0 win and a crucial three points that will keep the wolf from the door again, for now at least.

There is the small matter of the second leg of the Copa del Rey tie against Guijuelo on Tuesday night—with Atletico 6-0 up from the first meeting—but the next time those Atletico supporters gather at the Calderon for a meaningful match it will be in 2017, the final year that the club are playing there.

Many questions await that version of Atletico and indeed their manager in the New Year, but right now he has a victory to enjoy, and one which would have felt as though it was a long time coming.

Looking even meaner and moodier than he usually does, Simeone didn’t look as though he wanted to take any prisoners on Saturday afternoon. He set out his team to take the three points, and they duly delivered them.

Forced into changing his goalkeeper following the injury to Jan Oblak sustained in that Villarreal defeat, Simeone was expected to field Miguel Angel Moya in goal, but elsewhere there were changes.

Sime Vrsaljko came in for Juanfran at right-back for what was only a second league start of the season, while the midfield looked a little more purposeful and balanced with the trio of Gabi, Koke and Saul operating in there. Tiago—whose error contributed to the first Villarreal goal on Monday and was then immediately substituted—wasn’t even in the squad.

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Ahead of them it was almost as though Carrasco, Griezmann and Kevin Gameiro were just told to get through as much running as possible, creating space and pulling the visiting defenders around in all directions. All three had been substituted by the end of the game, and all looked shattered.

It was running from Griezmann which helped create the goal, as he hared toward the Las Palmas penalty area, only to see his effort blocked.

Enter Saul, and there seemed to be a great deal of pent-up frustration in his emphatic effort from the edge of the box which flew into the top corner of the net. No fewer than five Las Palmas players were surrounding him when he took the shot, but all of them were helpless. The crowd erupted, and you got the sense that there was plenty of frustration in that, too.

Villarreal’s 3-1 win at Sporting Gijon meant this wasn’t a victory that ensured a return to the top four, but it did at least get things moving in the right direction again.

With Barcelona not in action until they face Espanyol on Sunday evening, and Real Madrid over in Japan at the Club World Cup, optimistic Atleti fans would have noted that their club moved closer to the teams they consider their big title rivals, but in reality it isn’t about them at the moment.

It is just about this team and club getting back on track, and they certainly did that in their final league match of 2016.

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By the time they return to league action at Eibar on January 7 Simeone would have had a chance to work on whatever issues he feels he needs to, but he and his players would also have been able to have a break.

With such a large advantage, you can’t imagine that any of the regular first-teamers will be involved in the Copa del Rey this week, and this now offers a perfect opportunity for Simeone to send his players away from what would have become a pretty exhausting place in recent weeks.

The manager, too, will need room and space to breathe, and it could just be that the winter break has come at the perfect time for Atletico Madrid. The fact that it has come off the back of a victory makes it even more important.

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A failure to beat Las Palmas would have seen the ill-feeling creep up on the club during their midseason break, but this will at least allow them to forget about it for a while.

This season can still be salvaged—through either improved league form or a good showing in the Champions League—but everyone at Atletico must surely be told to forget about it for now. To go home, surround themselves with their families, celebrate Christmas if that is what they do, and to just get some space.

It has been a hectic season in which things have gone wrong a lot more often than was planned.

That first half of the campaign is in the past now, though.

It’s time to rest, recuperate and make sure the second half is a lot more consistent.