• Direct Narration and statistics

Although the fog surrounding the Wanda Metropolitano had risen, Atlético walked the entire game with reduced visibility. He never knew how to recover a weak beating pulse from those damn penalties in Saudi Arabia. He did not find a single idea with which to do the least damage to the courageous Colista Leganés, the second most thrashed team in Primera. This time it was not a matter of aim, it seemed more like a collapse.

It may have been one of the longest matches, however tedious, that have been perpetrated in the Red and White venue. Simeone's boys, in full resilience from the stab wounds they received in their last three episodes, the last one in León, in front of a Second B, it took a world to bask an idea with which to surprise Leganés. In that distressing initial act, the great ovation was won by Marcos Llorente for a waste of energy and pressure on the rival defense. The midfielder, who barely passed a ball with dignity, would leave Vitolo behind after the break. The fact is that the alarm never rang. There was no pattern, script or imagination.

From the fog, by surprise, Sime Vrsaljko broke in, 620 days after his last adventure with Atlético. One year after his last match with Inter. His was the right flank that barely generated some small spasm in the blue and white defense. The Croatian, logically, noticed his inactivity. The whole of Javier Aguirre, acclaimed for his past days in red and white, was the one who assumed command without complexes and courageously. His were the initial blows. With Kevin and Braithwaite stretching Jan Oblak, who is always wide awake. The five pepineros defenses were like a scorched toast for a breakfast that aimed to be repairing, after the last blots.

The stands had time to dispatch sterile wars over who is more of Atlético or who loves Simeone more. Interwar periods have these things. Crossed whistles round trip. Meanwhile, Morata forgave the sharpest occasion before Cuéllar, Correa emulated the buzzing of a bee, Saul remained disoriented and Joao Felix tried to successfully achieve an outbreak of lucidity. Thus he woke up the first morning of the year in the Metropolitan.

Final Brawl

Nor is it that the matter was clarified while in the locker room. Neither the entrance of Vitolo nor that of Herrera . Pichu Cuellar froze the ball in his goal to the limit and ended up costing him the expulsion. And the Leganés was growing, accommodated in a sudoku that Atlético never managed to decipher. Moreover, he walked a good stretch with his heart and guts seized by the rival's flutters around his area. Between Kevin and Braithwaite they returned the fog to the stadium, even though the sun was already warming in the Oblak trench. Fear of rushing back into the void cringed the red and white team for a good stretch.

Atlético did not play anything and, of course, also failed to escape the state of shock in which it is. Without a compass, without a helm, without something tangible to hold on to to regain consciousness. It was a cold January morning in which Vrsaljko appeared, premiered in LaLiga Saponjic , which had in his head the last hope of his team, and Cuellar took the staff out of his mind in the addition with his endless departure from the field. Simeone left again with a severe headache. And, above, the next stop, on Saturday, is the Santiago Bernabéu.

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