Giuliano, pure Simeone

It was Giuliano that kid who, in 2015, the Calderón band ran, in the role of ball boy, to hug his father in an Atlético-Getafe. Giuliano was that boy who often traveled from Argentina to accompany his father in training sessions and kick the ball with the children of Juanfran (Óliver) and Gabi (Joel). Giuliano is the footballer who wore the ‘7’ on his back in the first game of the summer for Atlético 2021-22, 18 years old, of legal age, and with a place in the preseason by his own merits and not his surname. If any of the eight kids who jumped in the starting eleven of the Cholo in Burgo de Osma had it more difficult than the others, it was him, forced to demonstrate double, that he is not there because he is the son of who he is but on his own merits. Before the cameras he left it. That he is a faithful heir to his father. That he is there because he has earned it, game by game.

Cholo himself said it in his interview with AS last Tuesday. “His growth comes from the minor categories, from youth to Atleti B and that was not managed by me. The growth speaks of what the coaches worked with him ”, adduced the father as a coach. And as a father he was smiling yesterday in Burgo de Osma. Because it is inevitable. Because he was looking at the grass and in front of him a mirror rose: his son spilling his surname in each set he had. Cholo did not wear his usual black suit for matches. Had it been so, it would have been too small at shoulder height.

Because Giuliano showed that ‘growth’ that ‘the coaches who worked with him’ before saw. Because Giuliano fought each ball as if it were the last and that game was not a summer bowling but a final, because he fought, fought and fought, because he moved with intelligence, because his boot assisted so that Soriano scored the only rojiblanco goal of the game. Simeone once said, in El Partidazo, 2018, that he did not see himself training a son, that home football matches became official. He spoke of Gio, his eldest son, who dazzled in his jump from Argentina to Italy. “It is very difficult to have a child in the locker room. For him, for the relationship … If in 5 or 6 years he takes on a much more important figure than he has today, we will talk about another situation, ”he explained. Three years have passed and the projection of Giuliano, the youngest of the three children he had with his first wife, Carolina Baldini, has made his words. Because the father became a coach and, like Simeone, he could not have been more proud.

Confirmation in Burgo de Osma

Giuliano was the best news for an Atlético who took the duel against Numancia on penalties, without going beyond the draw in the remaining 90 minutes. Giuliano, who came to the rojiblanca discipline two years ago, without River's permission. There was noise from that. As much as a quiet landing for Giuliano in the Atletico Youth Division of Honor. Giuliano was tearing off the ball boy suit of yesteryear and Cholo's last name to start at the bottom. Soon climbed, he conquered his coaches by showing that for what they sing to his father between ‘ole, ole and ole’. Pundonor, claw, fight, do not give a ball for lost. Last season at B, shining in the Junior League champion, his father could not help it: open the door of the first team this summer, this preseason with hardly any first team players, to that boy who kicks it down. Giuliano. The last name they know. Write down the name.