Since the 2021-22 season began, Atlético with the champion scepter in hand, the team has bled to death on that flank that never failed: that of its defense. Almost from the beginning, Oblak showed his most human profile. Almost from the beginning, the problems in defense began for Simeone. Savic, out in the first four days of the Champions League group stage due to the suspension in the second leg of the last 16 the previous season, against Chelsea. Its most efficient partner, the sourdough of Cholo’s pizza, broke on matchday 4 of the League, due to the return of the CONMEBOL footballers. The Uruguayan did not play. Simeone continued to embrace that system that made him fly in the first round of 2020-21, with three central defenders.
Savic and Giménez coincided against Athletic and Getafe, the Uruguayan was absent against Alavés, Savic began to do so in the Champions League matches (Porto, Milan…) that were arriving. Cracks were appearing in the cornerstone of Cholo’s solidity. What began as a tie for a tie (Villarreal, Porto, Athletic) three months later became a defeat after a defeat (seven in the last 13 games, something never seen before in Cholo’s decade at the head of the rojiblanco bench). Savic, absent in ten of them (nine, down, one, the last, on the bench). The cracks were already like water in a broken dam: flooding everything. Oblak, with hardly any miracles, has already conceded more goals in the League (26) than all those he collected from the back of his net (25) in all of last LaLiga. Two titles, the two with the shortest path, the Spanish Super Cup and the Copa del Rey, lost in six days. And Simeone thinking about something: the return to 4-4-2.
Perhaps that is the most striking thing about this season: see Simeone doubt, that no idea is sustained. He goes back to 4-4-2 for a while (parts of the games against Cádiz and Milan), days (against Rayo), it works for him, the players work playing in his place, the team wins again (Rayo Vallecano, Majadahonda ). But the system fell apart again in the match at La Cerámica, back to 5-3-2. In January, Simeone lost Trippier definitively (four games). He needed real cement to be able to stand on that pillar that founded cholismo: solidity at the back, his 4-4-2, where the exit after the robbery was key. Reinildo Mandava seems like their man.
The winter transfers
The left back of Mozambique, the best in Ligue 1 last season, in a Lille that was proclaimed champion, “steals” like no other. “It has a timing extraordinary to endure duels and always knows how and when to put his foot. There are hardly many players who can beat him one-on-one today”, Andrés Onrubia, French football specialist in Diario AS, described him in a profile that analyzed his football. He is the ninth player who intercepted the most in Ligue 1, The one who goes to a duel with that statistic on his legs wins almost all of them (111 out of 194).
Reinforced cement for a hole that Simeone had tunneled in his defense: the left. Lodi is a Brazilian winger, he attacks with luxury but his defense is still difficult. Beautiful is central, not lateral. Reinildo was a signing for July that the poor results have accelerated for January. Simeone, in the test yesterday afternoon, put him in his starting eleven for the Camp Nou.
On the right, the other signing of the month that just passed: Daniel Wass. Llorente, who is still in the infirmary, breathes. Wass is not a natural winger but he plays (he was the outfield player most used by Bordalás at Valencia, 1,784′). His arrival will free him to play where he likes (and has proven to be lethal) again: several steps forward. Simeone has also tested him as a starter in all the tests with the Camp Nou in the lead this week. There will be no millitime for them. In the return to 4-4-2 they seem the right men, the Danish and the Mozambican, to recover that lost word. The solidity, principle of everything.