Marcos Llorente returns to the field where he worked with Zidane

Zidane will live today his twelfth official derby as a coach (he has three victories, six draws and two defeats in the previous eleven) on the stage where he played with Castilla. With the subsidiary he played two miniderbis and debuted precisely in one of them. It was not at Di Stéfano, but at Cerro del Espino where he took the alternative as a coach. There he lost 2-1 (Raúl de Tomás advanced to the whites and Aquino and Keita came back) and then he compensated in the second round in Valdebebas endorsing a 4-2 (goals by Álvaro Jiménez –2–, De Tomás, Benavente; Monsalve and Carlos Ramos) to a rojiblanco affiliate that ended up relegated to Third at the end of that season.

Of those Zidane miniderbis only one survivor plays tonight … with the other shirt. Marcos Llorente started both games for Castilla and now defends the rojiblanca. Llorente played 62 games for Castilla, of which 29 were at Di Stéfano. And although now he stands out as a scorer, in the Madrid subsidiary he did not lavish so much in front of the rival goal. In his two seasons he scored three goals, one of them against Talavera, at Di Stéfano.

Simeone has rediscovered him as an attacker. Llorente did not make his debut as a scorer with Atlético until February, but then he was unleashed. Of the ten goals he has scored as a rojiblanco (all in 2020), eight he has scored after confinement. “He is a high-level player who is showing another facet. He was known to have a lot of quality. I'm happy for him,” Zizou said yesterday about Llorente. His former pupil is today one more threat to watch for Madrid in the fields where he grew up for eight years.