Victor Machín Vitolo face in the
Atlético de Madrid
a difficult season to decipher. The canary, which is one of the names that have been put on the table to make money, is looking into a campaign in which he will have to climb the same mountain that has resisted him until now.
The complexity of the market, added to the fact that the Spanish international has a high record or that at the time the Athletic pay 30 million euros for it, they make an exit operation complicated. A scenario of transfer with a future call option could be more reasonable, but even so, it seems difficult that it will end up happening in a bear market like the current one.
This being the case, his presence in next season's project is increasingly reasonable. And for him it will be the umpteenth restart of a footballer who was signed as one of the best of Spain and the one in the Athletic it has not yet been seen to its full potential.
That the player is going to have to fight hard this season is obvious. Without going any further, in training this Thursday he had his own session to continue the preparation. The fact that companions like Marcos Llorente or Yannick
Carrasco have gained prominence in the face of Simeone, have made their positions -on band or forward (the Cholo used him there in several games) – are even more complicated.
But Vitolo don't throw in the towel. More to the contrary. The canary wants to succeed in the Athletic. Except for an operation that makes everything square and that aforementioned exit occurs, the international will try to convince and take a position.
Some untimely injuries, some decisions by the Argentine coach who has not trusted him as much as he has done with other teammates who did not demonstrate with performance that they deserved it more, have prevented the player from winning the role that he seemed destined to have in this equipment.
INJURIES AND TECHNICAL DECISIONS
According to EFE data, injuries and technical decisions have marked his two years as a mattress. Twenty of his 54 games correspond to physical problems, without minutes. To sanctions, one. Those 21 low games account for just 14 percent of the 134 official matches that his team played since its debut as a rojiblanco on January 4, 2018 against Lleida in the Copa del Rey.
To technical decisions of Simeone 24 matches without participation of the Canarian winger respond with the Atlético de Madrid that, added to the 52 who entered the field from the bench, that is to say without being a starter, they enlarge to 77 the duels in which he could start from the starting eleven and did not. They are 71 percent of the duels that were available, which were 113.
In those who did start there were only 33, who did find a hole as a starter in his two and a half years already in the Athletic, in which his longest series in the eleven is limited to three games; twice in 17-18, one of them stopped by an injury, and once this course, when he linked three duels against the Spanish, he Pomegranate and the Juventus, before being a substitute against him Barcelona.