MADRID – BARCELONA – Eight days before the end of the League, Atlético, Real Madrid and Barcelona star in a close-up of photography, as there are only two points of difference between first and third place.
What is the balance and panorama of each team in search of the league title? Three analysts of ESPN the arguments that the contenders have in the final stretch of the season are set out.
MANU MARTÍN
Does the Cholo Simeone help or harm this Athletic?
Diego Pablo Simeone does not lie. He never lied. It was just over nine years ago that he made his debut on the bench at Atlético de Madrid with a draw in Malaga. The mattresses resigned themselves to those years to see how Real Madrid, Barcelona, Deportivo de La Coruña, Valencia, Seville … overtook them for decades and celebrated as an exceptional thing to enter European positions at the end of the season.
The coach warned that the future was only match-by-match. Since then, Atlético de Madrid’s growth line has always been on the rise. From Europe reads from 2012 to 2018, match to match, he also won two European Super Cups, two Champions finals, a League, a Copa del Rey, two Spanish Super Cups, not to mention some individual recognition as the best coach of the decade recently awarded.
Diego Pablo Simeone does not lie. He never lied. At the start of the 2019-2020 season he warned that it would be a year of transition. He had lost almost all of his starting defense from the previous season. They had left Atlético de Madrid part of their extension on the court with the departure of names like Godín or Gabi. And all because he needed regeneration for the future. For months the technician was criticized for saying the year would be difficult. He finished third in the league and eliminated the European Champion in the round of 16 of the Champions League.
Diego Pablo Simeone does not lie. He never lied. This season, as if it were a continuation of the end of last season, raised the best expectations for play and results that the Athletics remember in the last decade. And that they said the attack was based on a player who seemed to come from retirement at 34 and a young man who was too expensive for what he contributed. When rivals called him League Champion in December and January, five months from the end, he warned that many things would still happen.
When rivals complained about their many casualties, no one looked at the Turó d’el Espino infirmary, where COVID, physical injuries and in many cases also mental injuries due to the deaths of relatives, left the advantage achieved in the first section of the season at just one point. In a difficult season for all, Atlético is the leader after 30 dates.
And is it still questioned that the mattress motor is the one that never lies, the one that has never lied? As Cervantes said in the mouth of Don Quixote: “Borden Sancho, signal that we ride”
RODRIGO FÁEZ
Can physical wear and tear limit Real Madrid’s chances?
The final stretch of the season comes at a difficult time for Real Madrid. In a very difficult week, Zidane’s side have beaten Liverpool and FC Barcelona in El Clàssic. However, concern has taken hold of the environment after his coach’s words about the physical condition of the squad: “We are at the limit.”
From the locker room, several voices admit that the season is “the toughest” in recent years. Many players have to go dosing in training and are exposed to the fact that, at the most unexpected moment, they fall injured. This has happened to Ramos, Carvajal, Hazard, Odriozola or, for example, Lucas Vázquez, who is missing the rest of the season due to a sprained cruciate ligament in his knee.
“They haven’t woven pre-season and that, added to the amount of games accumulated last year after the confinement and the lack of rest is biting them.” It is an authorized voice of the club that reveals to ESPN what the white squad is suffering this year. However, this same source admits that the team has been surpassing itself and has grown “in the collective” to become the only team that is alive in all competitions.
That’s why Real Madrid is different. Of course it can fail because the injuries are many and the lack of rotations can weigh on a team that already has a limited staff. Let’s remember the example of the front, where there are only two specific attackers like Benzema and Mariano, who just counts. However, the whites have a unique DNA: when it comes to the truth they always take this step forward that others do not dare to take and that is when Real Madrid applauds the feats of their team.
It remains to be seen whether any of these feats can be repeated this year. For now, and despite the injuries, Madrid is ready for everything and arrives eager to fight, suffer and win.
JORDI BLANCO
Losing all the key matches is the reflection that Barça had on Koeman?
Barcelona deflated at the decisive, but not definitive, moment of the season and the night when it could assault the lead was left with the icy smile and the feeling of an unfinished task that suddenly returned to him. a state of doubt that he had not remembered for months in the League.
The team that had scored 40 of the last 42 points, turning its insignificant fate into an exciting chase, already showed symptoms of exhaustion against Valladolid and suffered a stumble in Valdebebas that forces us to rethink the reality of ‘this Barça under construction but always doomed to keep the tone.
It happens that in the roller coaster that was until January the season, every time he had before a game of maximum demand the result denies its theoretical power and it demonstrates what it has added, in the absence of a last duel in the Camp Nou against Atlético, zero points again possible against the two great rivals for the title. It fell in the Metropolitan and it overthrew to him in both Classic Madrid. Arbitrations? Whatever … But he lost and was left with the feeling that, like last season, he is one step behind.
Ronald Koeman accepted the challenge of taking over a team in a frank depression. He agreed to run out of center forward, taking responsibility for announcing in person to Luis Suárez a decision of the board, and began the course with a lower staff, whatever is said, than any other aspirant. Even more so in Europe.
And without blinking at the criticism he adapted to a dressing room that has shown belief in him, both for its management and its design changes, proving not to be the uncompromising that could be suspected. Koeman, in addition, has given a reel to the youth by catapulting Pedri, Mingueza, Araújo or Ilaix Moriba, enduring a injury injury (Ansu Fati) much more transcendental than one might think and has been able to move his pieces with agility go find the right path.
It is understood advantageous, today, to say that Barça has come a long way to the Dutch coach considering that he started from scratch a project already injured and facing those of Simeone and Zidane … But it can not be overlooked that in key moments neither he nor his players, with Messi at the helm, have been able to strike a blow on the table.
To these three defeats in the League against Mattresses and meringues, are added the two collapses in the Champions League, both at the Camp Nou and against Juventus and PSG, which have just shaped this feeling of scarcity of resources in the big dates. and place Koeman on the target of doubt, for many an interwar coach but not for the future no matter how much in this terrible time he has had to live at Barça he has been able to keep afloat a team with so many deficits.
Johan Cruyff said (he always ends up at the Camp Nou referring to JC) that the really important thing is to reach the decisive moment of the season with aspirations to win titles and Barcelona, which on Saturday can win (or lose) the Cup against Athletic that already beat him in the Super Cup final, comes in mid-April fighting for a League in which in January, just three months ago, no one would have aspired to the club.
With all this on the scales, it seems daring, at least, to say at this point that Barça have grown up with Koeman.