MADRID – BARCELONA – With eight days after the end of La Liga, Atlético, Real Madrid and Barcelona shine in a closing photography, as there are only two points difference between first and third place.
What is the balance and panorama of each team in the search for the league title? Three analysts from ESPN they expose the arguments that the contenders have in the last part of the season.
MANU MARTÍN
Does Cholo Simeone help or harm this Atlético?
Diego Pablo Simeone is not lying. He never lied. Just over nine years ago, he made his debut on the bench of Atlético de Madrid with a draw in Malaga. The rojiblancos resigned during those years to see how Real Madrid, Barcelona, Deportivo de la Coruña, Valencia, Seville … passed them by for decades and were celebrated as something exceptional to enter European positions at the end of the season .
The coach warned that the future was only made match by match. Since then, Atlético de Madrid’s growth line has always been upward. From the 2012 Europa Legue to 2018 match by match, he also achieved two European Supercups, two Champions League Finals, one League, one King’s Cup, two Spanish Supercups, as he failed to comment on individual recognition as the best . coach of the decade recently awarded.
Diego Pablo Simeone is not lying. He never lied. At the start of the 2019-2020 season, he warned it would be a transition year. He had lost almost all of his basic defenses from the previous season. They had left Atlético de Madrid part of their extension on the field with the advance of names like Godín or Gabi. And all because he needed regeneration for the future. For months, the coach was criticized for saying it was going to be a difficult year. He finished third in the competition, eliminating the European champion in the last 16 of the Champions League.
Diego Pablo Simeone is not lying. He never lied. This season, as if it were a continuation of the end of the previous one, it raised the best per-game expectations and results that athletics remember in the past decade. And they said the attack was based on a player who appeared to be retiring at the age of 34 and a young man who was too expensive for what he contributed. When rivals gave him through League Champion in December and January, five months before the end, he warned that much was yet to come.
When the rivals complained about their many victims, no one looked at the Cerro del Espino infirmary, where COVID, physical injuries and in many cases also emotional injuries from the deaths of family members, left the advantage gained in the first section of The season. in just one point. In a difficult season for everyone, Atlético leads after 30 disputed dates.
And it’s still questionable whether the rojiblanco engine is the one that never lies, the one that never lied? As Cervantes said in the mouth of Don Quixote: “Sancho barks, sign that we are driving”
RODRIGO FÁEZ
Could physical wear and tear limit Real Madrid’s chances?
The last part of the season comes at a difficult time for Real Madrid. In a very difficult week, Zidane’s men beat Liverpool and FC Barcelona in El Clásico. However, concern has arisen about the environment after his coach’s words about the team’s physical condition: “We’re at the limit.”
From the dressing room, various voices admit that the season is “the hardest” of the past few years. Many players have to dose themselves during training and risk getting injured at the most unexpected moment. This has happened to Ramos, Carvajal, Hazard, Odriozola or, for example, Lucas Vázquez who misses the rest of the season due to a sprained cruciate ligament in his knee.
“They haven’t woven a preseason and that, added to the number of games collected last year after incarceration and the lack of rest, is crushing them.” It is an authorized voice of the club who is revealing to ESPN what the white squad is suffering this year. However, that same source admits that the team has outdone itself and “collectively” has become the only team alive in all competitions.
That’s why Real Madrid is different. It can of course fail because there are many injuries and the lack of rotations can weigh down a team that already has a limited roster. Let’s remember the example of the attacker, where there are only two specific attackers, like Benzema and Mariano, that hardly count. Whites, however, have a unique DNA: when it comes down to it, they always take that step forward that others don’t dare to take and that’s when Real Madrid applaud their team’s performance.
It remains to be seen if any of those accomplishments can be repeated this year. For now, and despite the injuries, Madrid is prepared for anything and comes with a desire to fight, suffer and win.
JORDI BLANCO
After losing all the main games, is it a reflection that Barça was too big for Koeman?
Barcelona was deflated at the defining moment, but not final, of the season and night he could attack the leadership, leaving him with a frozen smile and the sense of unfinished work that suddenly brought him into question. that he hadn’t remembered in the competition for months.
The team that added 40 of the last 42 points and turned its insignificant destination into a thrilling pursuit already showed signs of exhaustion against Valladolid and suffered a stumbling block in Valdebebas that forces us to rethink the reality of this Barça under construction, but always convicted. to keep the tone.
It happens that in the roller coaster that lasted until January of the season, every time he faced a game of maximum demand, the result denied his theoretical strength and it is shown by the fact that he added, in the absence of a final duel in Camp Nou against Atlético, zero points out of nine possible against the two big rivals for the title. He fell in the Metropolitano and Madrid knocked him down in the two Clásicos. Arbitrations? Anyway … But he lost and was left with the feeling that, like last season, he is one step behind.
Ronald Koeman took up the challenge of taking charge of a team in deep depression. He agreed to be left without a striker, took on the responsibility of personally announcing Luis Suárez’s decision of the board, and started the race with a lower squad, say, compared to any other candidate. Especially in Europe.
And without blinking an eye, he adapted to a wardrobe that has shown his belief in him, both for his management and for his changes in drawing, proving to be not as uncompromising as one might have guessed. Koeman has also thrilled the youth by catapulting Pedri, Mingueza, Araújo or Ilaix Moriba, taking a loss due to an injury (Ansu Fati) far more transcendent than one might think and he has been able to perform his pieces with agility to move to find the right way.
Nowadays it is clear that it is beneficial to say that Barça has been great for the Dutch coach, as he started a project from scratch, was already injured and faced that of Simeone and Zidane … But it cannot be ignored that at key moments neither he nor his players, with Messi up front, have been able to enter the table.
To those three defeats in the league against Colchoneros and merengues come the two Champions League collapses, both at the Camp Nou and against Juventus and PSG, that ultimately shape that sense of resource scarcity in the major events and place Koeman’s target of doubt, for many a technician from the interwar period but not for the future, even though in this terrible time that he had to live at Barça, he was able to sustain a team with so many shortages.
Johan Cruyff said (it always ends at Camp Nou, referring to JC) that it is really important to reach the defining moment of the season with ambitions to win titles and Barcelona, that they can win (or lose) the match on Saturday. ). Cup against Athletic, which has already defeated him in the Super Cup final, arrives in mid-April, fighting for a competition that no one would have aspired to at the club in January, just three months ago.
With all this at stake, at least it seems daring to say at this point that Barça has been great for Koeman.