On Wednesday, an Argentine friend of Ángel Correa attended Atlético de Madrid’s training session at Cerro del Espino in Majadahonda. The visitor was surprised by the risks that Jan Oblak took in the game with his foot, even when he was pressured by the forwards near the goal line. Sobriety and risk prevention with the ball have marked both the Slovenian goalkeeper’s career and Simeone’s era at Atlético. However, that image of the goalkeeper, with the central defenders open to the right and left to receive his short pass and to the foot, is the most unequivocal sign of the progressive evolution of Atlético’s game, which tonight (9:00 p.m., Movistar LaLiga) will be faces Las Palmas at the Insular stadium.
Simeone’s turn towards a more elaborate game from behind has also caused surprise in the gossip mills of Spanish football. Cholo has broken the cliché of being a coach who is only capable of winning with one style. He always defended that football can be played and won in many ways and that all of them were respectable. “We look for a way to improve, to grow, always looking for the best situations so that the team can continue competing and, above all, we are reinventing ourselves because life goes that way, to continually reinvent ourselves,” argued the Argentine coach after His team played one of its best games with the ball against Alavés to avoid the rival’s pressure since the start of the season. The release of the ball when the opponents press high has been one of the chronic flaws of Simeone’s Atlético.
Oblak’s improvement and greater participation with the ball at his feet to build the game not only describes an individual evolution, but also that of Atlético’s playing style. Opta data shows that the Slovenian goalkeeper in his first season in red and white, 14-15, completed 8.5 passes (the ball reached a teammate) per game. In the current one, he doubles that figure (17). Against Real Madrid (3-1) and in the defeat in Valencia (3-0) and against Real Sociedad (2-1), in which the team perceived that it was not overcoming the rival’s pressure were the games in which Oblak completed fewer passes, 10 in the first two and 11 in the third.
Their accuracy in deliveries has also gone in crescendo from its beginnings (43%) to 73% now. In this section it has a lot to do with the fact that the use of long balls and direct play have given way to a more touching game with less distance between passes, which reduces the difficulty and increases success. According to the consulting firm Driblad, the average distance of Oblak’s passes has been reduced from 51 meters in his first year to 28 this season. In the times when Atlético lived off the long game and second plays, Oblak averaged four passes to the opposite field. Neither in the previous campaign (0.50) nor in this one (0.6) did he reach one.
The work for Oblak to improve his footwork and mechanize his automatisms has been arduous. There have been prolonged streaks in time in which the first pass of the opponent’s attacks were Oblak’s attempts to play long with his foot. There were games in which Simeone became desperate because even many of his long kicks went over the touchline. The Slovenian has improved in distant movements and now works daily on getting the ball short. The goalkeeper coach, Pablo Vercellone, subjects him to exercises in which he works on how to shape himself and also the controls aimed at ensuring passes.
Oblak has been the last to adapt to this transformation undertaken three years ago by Simeone and initiated with the move to a system of three center backs and two wingers in a match with Osasuna at El Sadar. It was so surprising at that time that Cholo abandoned his non-negotiable desire for the 4-4-2 and that he placed Mario Hermoso as the third center back on the left to help the team come out with the ball played. A team less inclined to play the long ball was then announced. Under that formula, with some occasional return to the classic mold, Simeone conquered the League in 2020. In the following two seasons he alternated the drawings a lot to the point of admitting that this could have disoriented the players.
The bad first half of last year was definitive in the turnaround given to the game. Simeone admitted that having witnessed the World Cup in Qatar from the stands had inspired him and that he had absorbed concepts that he was willing to apply. One of them was to once again bet with conviction on Hermoso and the three center backs, but this time with Oblak as a more active element. In that second half of the season in which Atlético made amends and were able to earn a place in the Champions League, Oblak raised his average of completed passes to 15. Simeone has found accomplices in this new version in Koke and Morata, who had the very assimilated plan to work with Luis Enrique in the national team. Witsel, as a center back, is also a key piece, just like Griezmann. In a team in which the majority of its midfielders are classified under the label of postmen because they are more about moving the ball than playing it with one touch (De Paul, Saúl, Barrios, Riquelme, Lemar, Marcos Llorente) that the central corridor (from the goalkeeper to the center forward) has clear concepts is essential to build the game from back.
The proposal has continued at the beginning of the season. Simeone is satisfied, but he also points out that we do not have to be fundamentalists of a style. His proclamation is that you just have to be a radical to win. And, at the moment, he does it with Oblak’s footwork.
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