Seven years ago, while Atlético began their flight towards the conquest of the League, Marcos Llorente and Mario Hermoso, who are only separated by five months (Madrid, 1995), were two of Ramis's untouchables in Real Madrid who traveled the Youth League.
Llorente was the midfielder and Hermoso, the left back.
They were 18 years old and they stole a lot of the glances in that team of kids.
The two had known each other long before.
Today, seven years later, they attract attention again.
But neither the shirt nor the position have anything to do with that of those days.
Fate and Atlético brought them together again in the summer of 2019. Llorente accepted the red-and-white proposal in June, after being convinced that the best thing for his future, as it is turning out, was to leave behind his days in white.
Hermoso, who was then a basic piece of Espanyol, and on which Real Madrid had a right of first refusal, gave his ok a month later.
30 million cost the midfielder and 25 the defender.
Although it was not easy for either of them to start, they did not raise their voices either.
They only worked until their opportunity came.
Tonight, on the pitch of Alfredo di Stéfano, who so often stepped on as kids, they will experience a derby together that can further boost the red-and-white team's formidable career in La Liga.
If a year ago, at Real Madrid they saw both transfers as a round operation for their safe, today they wonder why they did not ask for something more.
Llorente is the most unbalancing Spanish player and the best solution, always at full speed, when Atlético gets stuck.
Simeone
pulled him out of midfield, brought him closer to the area and there, after exploding at
Anfield
, he became what he is today.
"I never stopped to think that I could end up playing there," Llorente, now international, told himself in an interview at the Deportista Club.
"He is showing another facet that he did not have at Real Madrid,"
Zidane
, his last coach before Simeone, with whom he did not connect on the field
, summarized in the previous one
.
His dazzling 2020 is summed up in 10 goals and eight assists.
Half, five points and three gifts, in this course.
Back off with James
Hermoso cannot be measured by his targets, but by the ones he avoids.
And yet, last Wednesday, in the Salzburg fridge, he signed one, the first as a rojiblanco, which is already part of the athletic imaginary.
Simeone's change of system, with three centrals and two lanes, has made him an untouchable piece.
Even when
Giménez
was healthy, the one waiting on the bench was
Felipe
.
Since October, his role on the team has changed.
«He has waited in silence and with effort his moment has come.
He never gave up, "they point out from around the defender, who came as a replacement for
Lucas Hernández
due to his versatility (central and left-back) and added 35 games.
He has started the seven consecutive victories in the League.
There could still be a third change of curb that 2019, but the New Jersey derby took it away.
At a meal in a luxurious restaurant in New York, with Florentino Pérez and the Atlético leadership, the transfer of James Rodríguez, who had Simeone in love, was closed.
That famous 3-7, in which Hermoso and Llorente participated, made the white team back down with the operation.
"Zidane was a winning footballer and now, a winning coach," Simeone complimented the Frenchman yesterday, the last to have beaten Atlético in the league.
It was on February 1, 26 games ago.
This will be a quiet derby.
A derby in times of Covid.
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