In that recent agony, in that natural suffering with which it lives the last days, Atlético de Madrid won the League on the wire, defeated at halftime, victorious at the end and always leader during 90 minutes of high tension, in which only saw champion when Luis Suárez culminated the comeback against Valladolid, relegated, which began the ingenuity of Ángel Correa.
In nine minutes, from 58 to 67, the dark panorama of 1-0 passed to the liberation of 1-2, because the Argentine attacker invented what he usually creates with constancy lately, goals almost out of nowhere, and because, in the 67, Luis Suárez accepted the involuntary gift of Sergi Guardiola to act as leader, champion and scorer.
Unapproachable first, surviving later, the entire League unattainable, Atlético is the winner of a vibrant, intense and compressed tournament, perhaps the most exciting due to its resolution in recent times. It is an eleventh championship title. The second of Diego Simeone, the undoubted leader of such success, the ‘revolutionary’ who discusses, for the second time, the dominance of Real Madrid and Barça.
Nobody but ‘his’ Atlético has won the League in the last seventeen seasons. And he has done it twice. Whether it is a feat or not depends on the perspective from which you look at the rojiblancos, the two “monsters” that the coach spoke about not long ago in full pursuit of a leadership and the differences between the three.
The 2020-21 League is yours. From Simeone. And also Luis Suárez, an expendable scorer for Barcelona and an indispensable scorer for the champion, the one who signed the final goal of the League; of Oblak and its crucial stops; the shocking Marcos Llorente and his goals; of the overflowing Carrasco; of Captain Koke; of Saúl less titular than ever; of the leader Savic, today absent due to suspension; by Joao Félix, Giménez, Felipe, Hermoso, Trippier, Lodi, Héctor Herrera, Vrsaljko, Vitolo, Kondogbia, Torreira, Lemar, Dembélé, Ivo Grbic …
And by Ángel Correa. Never among the favorites, always in doubt that his unpredictable condition arises, but with a courage and audacity within the reach of few, he emerged again to the rescue of Atlético, as decisive as he has been in many sections of this season, so main protagonist in the title as it deserves.
When Atlético’s 1-0 defeat was irrefutable, when it was difficult for them to create real chances, when the VAR reviewed the tying goal (then it did not rise to the scoreboard) of Madrid against Villarreal, when nothing predicted the equalizer, they grabbed the ball in the edge of the area, as if it were in any other game, for 1-1.
There Atlético resurfaced, winner by the 1-2 of Luis Suárez, who found a ball that was from Valladolid directly towards Masip’s goal. He ran, ran and ran, he outlined to his left, to achieve the right gap to complete the comeback, to make the rojiblanco team champion as he did to Barcelona.
To triumph in a group determined to win the League from the beginning, always ambitious, reinvented, decisive many times and brilliant many others, resistant when he felt the risk, when he perceived a possible fall, between the agony against Osasuna or Real Sociedad, also in the final appointment in Valladolid, but with the conviction that no one deserved more than him this sonorous triumph.
Atlético suffered more than an hour until they consolidated it, at a disadvantage from minute 18. Because there are no 52 points difference in a game. There is neither future champion nor relegated. With so much at stake, there are no nuances. Neither mistakes like Yannick Carrasco’s are allowed. The meeting was not going one way or the other, when the Belgian winger allowed himself an inadmissible license this Saturday.
At the exit of a corner in favor, in advantage, with all the options that he did not choose much less risky than the dribble that he selected and did not come out, his excess promoted the frenetic and lethal counterattack of Valladolid, definitively launched by the fine heel of Toni Villa, who overflowed even more all the rojiblancos players, against the current in the hunt for the lone Óscar Plano, who got the ball to head the sprint towards Oblak with three touches from Weissmann, the aforementioned one from Villa and another from Marcos André .
The accurate shot of the ’10’ with the right, when Giménez was already pouncing on him, was the perfect resolution to a perfect counterattack. An incontestable action, if it were not because it had emerged from Atlético himself, determined in that persistent agony in which he moves in the last days, in the suffering of the champion.
Perhaps because of the tension, perhaps because of the very plan he devised, perhaps because of fear, perhaps because of the opponent, perhaps because of vertigo, it was not Atlético that overwhelmed Real Sociedad and Osasuna with their pressure in the first half. Not so determined nor so expressive. Not even minimally recognizable in such parameters. Nervous, in a hurry, jumbled, stuck, even more so with the 1-0.
A visible problem, mitigated by Villarreal’s immediate goal against Real Madrid (then the Whites won 2-1) and resolved in the second half, in the momentum that was the break. Because of the halftime talk, because of the team’s own reaction, because of the awareness that, at the same level as the first half, the League would be a more than complex matter, whatever it was, another team emerged from the dressing room, the leader unalterable in the last 25 days, the deserved champion of LaLiga Santander.
For Valladolid there was no carambola. He did not come close to everything he needed on the last day, not even a fraction of what the permanence required. He did not win, which was the first premise of all, but neither Elche nor Huesca lost.
A victory in the last 21 appointments is an unbearable weight, unbearable, for any team. Valladolid has felt it, which goes down to the Second Division three years later. Instantly by moment his survival was complicated, suddenly on the edge of the precipice, to which he fell this Saturday, bowled over by a champion. EFE. (JL).