Luis Núñez-Villavearán
Updated Saturday, March 9, 2024-18:12
Cádiz
had gone
24 days without knowing victory.
He had barely achieved another one before, but the last third of LaLiga is a space of need, of emergencies.
In which those who are in that pit play with desperation and anxiety, yes, but also with an energy that the teams that are in no man's land do not have.
And they achieved it at the expense of a sad
Atlético
, who seemed to think more about Wednesday's
Champions League
than about consolidating their fourth place.
[Narrative and Statistics, 2-0]
The other day
Xavi
responded that there was a League for them,
Simeone
should shout the same response to his locker room.
The overwhelming Atlético
of 2023 is far away
, the one that was a cyclone after the World Cup in Qatar.
The rojiblancos are today a flat team with some traces of pride and intensity so that, when the stars align, they can beat an astonished
Unión Deportiva Las Palmas
, but end up surpassed by hungrier teams like
Inter
and
Athletic
.
Cádiz
came out hungry
.
Winning duels, as Cholo likes, and touching the ball with discretion.
Especially
Navarro
, the irrepressible Catalan midfielder.
His were the best details of the duel and especially nice was the 1-2 that he made to
De Paul
in midfield and with which he started the play for Cádiz's first goal.
The midfielder came out of the action with the entire field in front of him, he made a wall with
Javi Hernández
until he opened the wing for the side who put it in the small area where
Juanmi
was waiting for him between the center backs.
The Paulista
brand lost and the Malaga striker took off like an Airbus to put his header into
Oblak
's squad
.
The Slovenian could have done a little more, the red-and-white centre-backs could have done a lot more.
The player who belongs to Betis and is on loan to the yellow team until the end of the season has a different mood.
He wanted to seek happiness in the little silver cup after his failed experience in Saudi football.
He already has tripled the number of goals in the Spanish LaLiga in a third of games.
Football is not just states of form, it is also states of mind.
Atlético
seems in depression after the latest setbacks
.
The distance in the league with the first, the elimination of the Cup and the defeat in the first leg against Inter do not generate the best dynamics, as Simeone likes to say,
to
face the games with a positive mentality.
In addition, they have been without their best player for several games.
It's not that the team misses
Griezmann
's goals , it's also that they miss him in the final third of the field, where games are won.
The red and white forwards are unassisted, with a team that is too long and they have to find plays individually or from 45 meters away, like a shot from
Correa
that, a little further to the left and would have been a flag goal.
The afternoon of Paulista
Who doesn't need much either is
Juanmi
.
Cádiz needs him, yes, two points from salvation at the beginning of this day.
But the man from Malaga only had to wait for a new mistake from his best partner,
Paulista,
to make the second.
He was in all of them, the Brazilian.
The referee saved him from a possible penalty for handball in the 40th minute, five days ago that would have been pointed out.
But Oblak
couldn't
do it due to poor placement on a Cádiz clearance.
Juanmi
waited for him to jump with his hand on his back, the center back ate it and the man from Malaga shot Oblak 25 minutes from the end, 2-0.
To ingest cyanide.
Athletic pride did not appear except in a player who always shows pride and courage.
Llorente
was able to close the gap just five minutes after Cádiz's second goal after a header off a good cross from
Riquelme
.
Ledesma
responded masterfully and
Morata
, who had the ball fall at his feet, could not direct the ball towards the goal.
Today was one of those days.
Wednesday, it shouldn't be any other.