Has Simeone really ever loved Joao Félix?

• Unfulfilled promise.

  Messages from Simeone and a ballast of 127 million

• Champions.

  Atlético's impetus dresses up in drama against Bruges

Joao Félix

is ​​being a kid.

is being unfair.

Atleti is weaker because of both.

From there, everyone can decide what bothers them the most, who should be more responsible and mature and who wants more, this factor, the sentimental, decisive when it comes to recruiting support.

Cholo knows that perfectly and is exploiting it at a difficult moment: the one indicated after the draw against Brujas is the only attacker who did not play, instead of the five who did and were unable to score a goal in 21 shots or the technician whose triple change in the 60th minute disoriented a team that was playing its best hour of the course.

Strategically, sacrificing a footballer who, let's face it, has never fulfilled you, is a good short-term distraction maneuver... and a disastrous long-term sporting maneuver.

Joao's critics point to an absolute truth: his performance does not support his pretense.

Many more flashes than forcefulness, more promises than facts, more stories than novels.

But not even they can deny the obvious: he is the most pure-talented footballer in the squad and, given that

has incomprehensibly missed the goal, the only one with the potential to change you for a season and turn this nondescript team into something more.

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Champions.

Joao Félix's umpteenth anger and Simeone's explanation

• Drafting: LUCAS SÁEZ-BRAVOMadrid

Joao Félix's umpteenth anger and Simeone's explanation

In general, when health and coaching have allowed him to be indisputable during long stretches, Joao has responded.

He was the best footballer in LaLiga during the first three months of the year of the last title, until an injury in the derby derailed his course.

He was once again decisive from February to April of this 2022, when Atleti saved his season, until a muscle problem took him off the field.

He came back like a shot in preseason and that's how this League started in Getafe, but... As soon as he went down, and it's true that he went down, he progressively disappeared until the unpleasant humiliation on Wednesday at the Metropolitano.

Simeone has every right and enough arguments not to remove the Portuguese, although it is hard to believe that he is the last of those above.

Actually, the only indisputable, if we stick to performance, should be

and he has not been.

What is difficult to justify is the obvious public punishment he is subjecting Joao to while he forgives much more serious grievances against players like

, who took advantage of a leave granted by the club due to illness of a relative to attend an awards gala in Florida.

The Argentine is already forgiven and played, at the usual inconsequential level, against the Belgians.

Meanwhile, Joao warmed up for 40 minutes, saw how they called him twice to enter and at the last moment they returned him to the corner and ended up throwing the bib when, with 0-0 at home, Simeone decided that the last change was to remove Griezmann and put in...

, a midfielder.

It is hard to believe that a guy as intelligent and attentive to details and gestures as Cholo did not realize the ridicule that this entailed.

The feeling is that Simeone has decided to blow up the bridges and it is hard to imagine that their reconstruction is still possible.

He has never dealt well with those footballers who, due to charisma (

) or attitude (Joao), discussed total control with him and what is beginning to become clear is that the signing of the Portuguese for 127 million, a decision of the club and not of Cholo , it will be a calamitous operation if it depends on both learning to coexist and empower themselves.

It's not going to happen.

So the separation next summer seems inevitable between a footballer who never took his place in the gear and a coach who never managed to polish his diamond.

Simeone said that not having managed to get the most out of Joao is his biggest failure.

I agree.

The question is whether he really intended it.

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• Diego Simeon

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