For ten months on the market, Thomas lemar still in the Atlético de Madrid, seized on an opportunity that he has not yet taken advantage of and faced with a second extra game in the team, because it was sustained last January and it has done so again this summer, waiting to demonstrate the undoubted qualities that led him to the rojiblanco team , but that for now they only recall their past in the Monaco.
It has been on sale since last January, when the club looked for a new destination for him to bring Edinson cavani, but he neither left then nor has he left now, because no offer has convinced him enough to leave Atlético, which he arrived as a figure in the summer of 2018 and of which he is a regular substitute today.
He has been an expendable footballer without a doubt for Diego Simeone Within the options available to the squad, no matter how insistent he has put in rediscovering all the qualities that led the French international winger from Monaco to Atlético. All his overflow, his dribbling, his precision, his passes and his goals that have not yet appeared just from rojiblanco.
Will still search them Simeone, who has always highlighted the conditions that the French footballer has. In fact, the day after, on Tuesday, October 6, after the market closed, which was on the 5th at midnight, the technician had a striking individual talk with him, set aside to one side of the pitch, once the game was over. preparatory session. It lasted about half an hour. It is not usual to see the coach in such a long conversation on the grass with one of his footballers, as happened with Lemar.
“He is an important player who could not develop all the football he owns. But it has characteristics that not many players have within the squad (…) Its characteristics have always excited me ”, the Argentine coach said last January, when his departure was at least a possible fact.
“Patience and waiting for a player who is essential for us. We trust that when the championship, the Copa del Rey or the Champions League become important we will find the Lemar that we need and that he has inside ”, he explained a year before, in January 2019, just when they had already spent their first months at Atlético.
“Everything he does in the middle of the court, I would like him to be able to do it near the area. And we are working on that. He understands it, he is looking for it and every time he appears in those sectors, which is where it is more difficult to play and where footballers like Lemar are needed, the team will progress a lot ”, he said months before.
“Lemar is a fantastic player”, He had also highlighted in August 2018, newcomer to the club, in a process that in the field followed the same path as in the statements of Simeone, with a trip that began with an indisputable ownership, sustained for a season and a half beyond the benefits that the footballer showed, and with an invariable fall of the eleven afterwards.
At the moment, the winger has not lived up to expectations, signed to Monaco for 70 million euros for 70 percent of his sports rights; an economic amount that has never corresponded to the performance of the footballer at Atlético, beyond the promising start with which much more was intuited.
In his first year, in 2018-19, he played 43 games, 31 as a starter, with three goals and four assists. Of the 51 games his team played, he only missed one due to a technical decision, in a 2-0 defeat with him. Athletic in March, plus seven others for muscle injuries or a blow to the Achilles tendon.
His contribution, which began with the title of the European Super Cup in Tallinn against him Real Madrid, with him as the starter, it was far from what was expected. “This year (for the 2018-19 academic year) it has cost him. But I have no doubt that next year will have a fantastic season ”, Simeone advanced later, although the reality was different, within a constant irregularity.
In the preseason of the following season, 2019-20, he still had the starting role. The first five games of last season he played as a starter, then he suffered some muscle discomfort and his participation at the beginning was gradually reduced -even he was chosen to start in January- until his surprising irruption against him Liverpool at the Wanda Metropolitano, last March.
Later, his fall was already unquestionable: of the fifteen duels played since the return of the competition last June, he only played at the beginning only one, on June 20 in the 1-0 against Valladolid, when he played 60 minutes, and only participated in another five, of which only one corresponds to this campaign, when he played a quarter of an hour in 6-1 against Granada, on September 27.
It would have been his last duel with Atlético if he or the club had found a suitable destination. It has not been so. He maintains his hope of going back to what he was. He is only 24 years old – in November he will be 25 – and a lot of football in his boots, although in the rojiblanco team that has been more an intuition than a reality, although he dribbles backwards much more than he does forwards, where is the true complexity, and although his appearances in the area he anticipated so much Simeone are sporadic.
And although his contribution has not been far from what was expected. In his 72 games, three goals and four assists. He has not scored a goal or has given any directly since April 2019. In the entire 2019-20 campaign he did not score a goal or give any assistance. He still has a contract for three more years, until June 30, 2023. And at least one other bonus game. The definitive.