The Atletico Madrid has become in these years one of the most feared clubs in Europe. The rojiblanco team has eliminated many teams (Barça, Liverpool, Bayern, Manchester United…) who attended the matches with the Madrid club, feeling well above their rival. And many of them paid dearly for it.
And there is no need to go to this most recent stage with Diego Pablo Simeon at the head of the mattress team, also in the immediately previous one. There are very important players in European football in recent decades who literally have regrets about crossings with the Athletic.
One of them, for example, Alberto Aquilani, He carries with him a very bad memory of his duels with the mattress box. The Italian player recalled a few years ago that his career could have been different had he not suffered a setback against Athletic.
Europa League semi-final between Liverpool and Atlético de Madrid at Anfield Road. Italian Alberto Aquilani fights for a ball with Paulo Assunção.
Aquilani was booked by Liverpoolby the then technician of the ‘Reds’, Rafa Benitezin 2009. The English team paid 20 million euros for him to the Roma to replace Xabi Alonsowho had gone to Real Madrid.
The transalpine used to be one of the best midfielders in Europe but in England he did not look as expected. In his first course he suffered several injuries that did not allow him to have continuity. Of course, he gave him to be in the semifinals of the Europa League that he Athletic disputed against Liverpool.
The English team had lost in the first leg, in the Vicente Calderón, thanks to a solitary goal Forlan to pass from Jury, in the first minutes of that crash. In the turn, in Anfield Road, Own Aquilani had placed the 1-0 that took the match to extra time. In her, Benayoun put the 2-0 that seemed to eliminate the Athletic. However, Forlan scored in the 102′ the goal that scored the team coached by Quique Sanchez Flores at the end of Hamburg.
THE KEY MOMENT
Aquilania few years ago, he recognized that that goal changed his destiny in Liverpool. “If we had won, we would have played against him. Fulham in the final and therefore we would have had a great chance to win the Europa League“said the Italian. “It would have been a first trophy for me and that goal changed my luck, my life in Liverpool”, pointed out the now former player.
“But we lost and suddenly everything was different for me. My goal, the way I played, she forgot about it.” And it is that that goal was one of the only two that Aquilani scored for him Liverpool in 28 games. That game would have been a turning point for him, but the elimination made everything good disappear. And once Benítez, his great supporter, was fired at the end of the campaign, it became clear to Aquilani was not part of the plans of the new coach, Roy Hodgsonand was loaned to the Juventus.
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