When the pandemic stopped football, Real Sociedad had reached the Cup final and climbed to fourth place in the league after a formidable streak of 10 wins and two losses in their last 12 games.
Then came the collapse.
After the forced break, he only knew how to win two of the remaining 11 games and qualified in the last gasp for the Europa League thanks to a draw in the Metropolitano against an Atlético who did not play anything and with which he again measures his faces this Tuesday at the Reale Arena.
"We knew we could play well and get into a winning inertia, what we did not know was that a team so young, after such a hard restart in which we did not beat anyone, would know how to recover from a situation like this," he explained in September one of its franchise players,
Mikel Merino
, in an interview with this newspaper.
It was just before a portentous league start for the San Sebastian team.
After drawing his first two games, he won 9 of the next 11 and emerged as the revelation of the championship and as a potential threat to the big clubs of the championship.
What has happened, however, is that Real have once again repeated their fading from last season.
He has not won since November 26, adding six consecutive draws and two defeats in his last two games, against Barcelona and Levante.
Of course, it remains third in the classification, a scenario that in San Sebastián they would have signed in blood at the beginning of the course.
The crisis that Real is going through, beyond the fatigue due to an accumulation of games to which this squad is not used to, has two proper names, those of
David Silva
and
Mikel Oyarzabal
.
His absences due to injuries are weighing down a team that has managed to tackle the defensive problems that weighed so heavily the previous season.
In this streak of eight games without a win, the Canarian has only been able to play 89 minutes divided into two duels and the Eibar - who could return today - 245 in three.
And
Aritz Elustondo
, defensive pillar, just 135 in two.
The three casualties are decisive, but that of the world champion is even more so because he does not have a natural replacement.
The youth squad
Roberto López
is the closest thing, but he is still 20 years old and he needs to take more ground in the First Division to assume that responsibility.
The alternatives of centering
Portu
and
Januzaj
and overtaking Merino - the support of the team in this section - have not given
Alguacil
what he was looking for either.
"We have to cut the streak", sums up the Orio coach, aware that his team is playing better than their results say: "I'm even getting tired of hearing the message from rival technicians about how well we do."
"It's nice to see Real play,"
Simeone
said on Monday
, adding to that shower of praise despite everything.
For Atlético, the challenge is to achieve a victory at the Reale Arena that guarantees a Christmas on the roof of the classification.
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