By: EFE Updated 22 Jan 2022, 18: 08 pm EST
Defeated in minute 90, in seven minutes of added time on Atlético de Madrid was resurrected with two goals, from Ángel Correa and Mario Hermoso, with whom he won this Saturday 3-2 against a Valencia team that had made the perfection the local errors, but he left empty due to his conformism.
Pulling epic, shield – this Saturday he dressed in the traditional due to 75 anniversary of its current denomination-, of the spiciness of Ángel Correa and the momentum of their fans, Atlético came out of the hole into which they had fallen due to their own mistakes, taking advantage of two ax blows from Yunus Musah and Hugo Duro in the first half.
More ambitious in the second, against an entrenched rival willing to leave time will pass until the end, the Brazilian Matheus Cunha, first, and Correa and Hermoso, later, took the rojiblanco team out of a funeral night to give their fans a comforting dose of epic at the current moment in the club.
Because the 3-2 does not hide the terrible problems of this Atlético. It only postpones them, after a nightmarish week in which they were eliminated from the Copa del Rey and defeated in the semifinals of the Spanish Super Cup. Unrecognizable compared to the team that was proclaimed champion just seven months ago, unable to look in the mirror of the previous ten years of the era of Diego Pablo Simeone: shaky in defense, dull in the middle, inane in attack. So it was in the first half.
With very little, Valencia threw two shovelfuls of dirt on the red and white squad. The ‘ches’ were about to break their ten-year streak without winning at home rojiblanca, since February 100 at the now defunct Vicente Calderón . José Bordalás’ men had already anticipated the rojiblanco decline in November, when they came back two goals against Atlético in Mestalla (3-3). They recovered Carlos Soler in the Metropolitan and they did not have the Danish Daniel Wass, fit after passing the covid-19, but in a tug-of-war with his club precisely because of an offer from Atlético de Madrid.
Simeone and Bordalás, so mimetic in their way of understanding football, proposed mirror alignments, which They changed between 4-4-2 and the defense of five when their teams did not have the ball. Atlético started as obtuse in the creation as in the previous duels, and with massive errors in the vicinity of the large area: first De Paul and then Vrsaljko anticipated what was coming.
Because this Atlético is no longer the competitive machine that, even if he did not have the day in attack, always kept his foot tough on defense. At the minimum, Valencia undressed him. Guedes anticipated Hermoso on the midfield border, put in a measured center for Musah’s free arrival, who settled on his right leg and whipped Oblak’s post that the Slovenian goalkeeper was unable to reject.
The ‘che’ group had not done anything in 25 minutes, and with 0 -1 froze an icy Metropolitano even more, despite the fact that the southern bottom demanded arrests -using another word- of its players.
As much as Simeone urged his team to advance lines, he insisted Atlético in being as harmless in a rival field as dangerous in theirs. Another divided ball in the ball from the large area that Guedes won and Soler protected ended in a pass from Lato to a Hugo Duro undetectable between local exchanges. The man from Madrid made his niche in the small area and sentenced Oblak alone: 0-2.
After the break, Simeone entrusted himself to Correa’s spiciness to find something different. Carrasco opened to the right and Joao to the left, and the Belgian tried it from afar. He added Cunha and to rebalance he introduced Felipe and removed Joao Félix, which earned a majority whistle from the harrow.
Despite the anger, the change of cards worked: Cunha closed the gap in the 63 after a corner kick by Carrasco in which the Valencian defense acted as a spectator and allowed the Brazilian to finish off with just his foot. Valencia did not flinch and allowed more and more to a rival who had a clear shot in the boots of Luis Suárez that the Uruguayan sent to the clouds, and playing with the local nerves in each interruption due to foul or substitution.
A high header by Hermoso, a shot parallel to the goal line by Correa, a header by Koke meekly for Doménech’s hands… Atlético was close to equalizing but desperate in a carousel of cards and interruptions.
However, those same interruptions gave the rojiblanco team seven added minutes that allowed Correa to equalize after a ride by Carrasco that Jaume rejected with his body and the Argentine clinched the net… And Hermoso culminated the rojiblanca resurrection by finishing off a low center by Cunha. Three points that are worth gold, like the color that surrounds the traditional shield that the Atlético players once again wore on their chests.