Narration: This is how we live the game
First Classification
Being a leader is a position that is reached with points, but being a leader is also a condition that is internalized.
Atlético has done the first, and very well, but they have not achieved the second, as was evident in the derby, where the only one who felt truly leader, from start to finish, was Madrid.
The League remains open, and it would have been in case of another result, because the Covid League does not respond to the variables that we know.
Everything is possible.
Atlético is still at the head of the table, but emotionally they have lost an opportunity, self-conscious in Valdebebas, without football responses, neither on the field nor from the bench, troubled by the changes Simeone, to the intensity and pressure of Madrid, who has not done nothing more than to recover the lost credit in a week in which he has played in the spirit of the finals, but the finals, make no mistake, are different.
[Narration and statistics: 2-0]
The intention of the teams at the starting point was to play as equals, but it did not go beyond the staging.
Atlético has found itself with the ball in this league and Madrid needs pressure more than ever, because it does not have the vertigo of other times.
He is a great man who has to work like a little boy and educate the elite for that is not easy.
Hence its two realities.
The derby found them at that interesting crossroads, beyond an accidental difference in classification.
Both wanted high pressure, both wanted to go out with the ball from kilometer zero, but a few minutes showed that the same intentions were not accompanied by the same conviction.
Ball for Madrid, danger for Atlético, Casemiro's goal and Simeone's swerve after a white monologue in the first period.
Lemar, Correa and Lodi were three changes of punishment from Simeone, accompanied, surely, by a harsh speech.
At first, Lemar saw a card.
In the second, Lodi was wrong and was about to cause a penalty.
Indicative.
Nerves.
The next decision of the Argentine was how to snatch Atlético his figurehead: Joao Félix.
The Portuguese did not understand.
Almost nobody.
Zidane had made a single modification, given the return of Carvajal, finally key.
The Frenchman advanced the position of Lucas Vázquez.
It made sense: the holder of the winger and the fittest footballer in the last game and whose commitment there is no doubt.
Between them they massacred Atlético on the right, where Hermoso was continually overwhelmed, without the rojiblancos being able to compensate with aid.
Madrid added to this the pressure on an Atlético who struggled when he wanted to get the ball.
Carvajal took advantage of a loss to enable Benzema, who threw at the post.
The warning brought fear to Atlético, who succumbed shortly after in the way that hurts his coach the most, in a center topped by Casemiro in what was Godín's private preserve, yesterday also without Giménez, injured.
Before Herrera, the novelty in the rojiblanco eleven, slipped, the Brazilian had already won the position for the auction in the place of the centrals.
Atlético's response did not exist until Simeone shook the shaker with the changes.
Unable to connect with Marcos Llorente or Carrasco, the two players who had produced the most offensive fluid in this stretch of the League, the impotence was summed up in the face of Joao Félix, on the ground every time he touched the ball.
The substitution, before the hour, pointed it out nonsense, because if anyone could change the course of the game it was the Portuguese.
Simeone understood it differently, when Saúl entered, who had the only shot of real danger, stopped by Courtois.
In a few minutes, it was too late, the time it took Carvajal to find another bad clearance from the red-and-white defense to launch a howitzer poisoned by the effect that entered the goal after hitting Oblak's back.
Quite the opposite happened in Madrid, with a Kroos owner and lord of the game, Modric in his role, Benzema with his dancer's steps in the interlinings, and the advanced defense to scorch the space between lines.
It was the superior Madrid in the game and in the definition, but also in the aggressiveness, and that has to be put in the must of Atlético.
Simeone's changes, which also involved the positions, when Marcos Llorente passed to midfield, changed the scenery less than the need, despite the good tone shown by Lemar, a soccer player on the rise from the black hole into which he fell upon reaching the Athletic.
Marcos Llorente returned to the band with the entry of Kondogbia by Luis Suárez, who spent the game on an islet, like a castaway, until he left the field.
Atlético finished without its reference and its scorer, and now it must start over but without forgetting that it is a leader, with its feet on the ground, in a more lively League.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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