Playing at home in front of your audience is usually a motivational bonus that leads players to give their best, spurred on by the crowd's uproar. However, there are cases where certain footballers they seem to block or not perform at the level they are supposed to when they have people on top and the pressure affects them. One of these cases seems to be that of Thomas Lemar, who since his arrival at Atlético he has lost during the games the minutes he has earned in training.
Simeone has given the Frenchman many more opportunities than any other signing who has failed to exploit his performance. Opportunities that led him to be starter in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 against Liverpool despite not being performing well previously and returning quickly from the injury he suffered in that game to sit on the bench at Anfield to the detriment of, among others, Vitolo. This confidence of the technician comes, beyond the amount invested in his transfer and the brushstrokes shown in some matches, of his good work in team practices, where it is usual to see him score goals and be decisive in the last meters. Not so in competition, where accumulates more than a year without marking and without distributing any assistance (from April 20 and 24 respectively).
Some goals and assists that Atlético's fans have practically been unable to see at the Wanda Metropolitano. Lemar has scored two goals and part of another, so to speak, as a rojiblanco in the League. Last season against Getafe at the Coliseum Alfonso Pérez on the fifth day, he made the second goal as well as much of the first, where his shot hit the crossbar and David Soria's back before entering the net. He would not see the door again until the thirty-third day, when he made both the victory in Eibar. No goal in the competition against his fans, leaving the only one achieved in the Metropolitan for the Copa del Rey against Sant Andreu of Segunda División B.
Best face out
But in addition to his low participation in front of the door, Lemar's best match as an athlete was probably the first official, in the European Super Cup against Real Madrid disputed in Tallinn when the rojiblanco team finished prevailing 2-4 in overtime and lifting the European title. In that match, before a state almost completely madridista, the Frenchman raised the illusions of a mattress fans who had just incorporated a World Cup champion in Russia. Unbalanced, daring, supportive and very participatory, Those sensations have been lost over time.
Lemar during an Atlético match at the Wanda Metropolitano.
JAVIER GANDUL (DAILY AS)
Something that happened again during the preseason in the United States or Sweden, where he left a wonderful assist for João Félix's second goal against Juventus that unleashed again the desire to see a good Lemar in his second year, some claims that died down with the start of the official competition. Now, the great handicap of the team can be a gap for the Frenchman. Atlético is one of the teams that grow the most at home, becoming Champions in a practically impregnable team before its public since the arrival of Cholo, both in the Vicente Calderón and in the Wanda Metropolitano (He has not lost at home in any knockout game neither in the Champions League nor in the Europa League).
The rojiblanco team will face playing alone, like the rest of the teams, due to the coronavirus pandemic. A scenario closer to training sessions where you can enjoy a technical quality from Lemar that is undoubted, but how much has been hidden in the encounters. Currently without a place in the eleven, since Correa has won the position with solvency and Llorente has been gaining weight as a right interior, the Frenchman may also be favored by the possibility of making five changes during the match in this atypical end of course. Thus, Simeone's challenge is to get Lemar out of training also in games, first behind closed doors and in the case of getting it and staying on the team, also in a future when the fans can fill the stands again.