Majadahonda (Madrid), Feb 7 (EFE).- For the second consecutive match with all his available squads, Diego Simeone, the Atlético de Madrid coach, already outlines the eleven of the 22 players on his squad who will start from eleven next Sunday against Celta, with the return of Marcos Llorente and with the possible chance for Saúl Ñíguez after eleven straight games as a substitute.
The first test, in an exercise in a reduced space, points to both novelties in the lineup that the Argentine coach devised for the visit to Vigo, while consolidating the 4-3-3, the system on which he has structured his team in the recent matches (it remains to be seen if he does so in Vigo as well), and reaffirms the base of his eleven today, in which Marcos Llorente will regain his place, after the adductor muscle injury.
Apart from the Madrid midfielder, who, according to the first test, will resume his position on the right wing instead of Ángel Correa, the starter in the last four games, Simeone’s line-up has been very defined in recent games, in each of the lines.
In goal since 2015, with Jan Oblak as the indisputable figure; in defense, with the growth of Nahuel Molina, the hierarchy of Stefan Savic, the reaction of Mario Hermoso and the competitiveness of Reinildo Mandava; in the center of the field, with the relocation of Koke Resurrección as a midfielder, as in the 2020-21 LaLiga champion, or with the current relaunch of Rodrigo de Paul; and in attack, with the three attacking men Simeone is betting on, with LLorente (or Correa), Álvaro Morata and Antoine Griezmann.
Simeone’s eleven currently moves in these parameters, which ratifies each game the growth he has seen since the return of the World Cup in Qatar 2022, in an alignment with no apparent place in this present, for now, neither for José María Giménez nor for Geoffrey Kondogbia neither for Axel Witsel nor for the two signings, Memphis Depay and Matt Doherty, nor for Pablo Barrios…
SAÚL AND HIS LONGEST SUBSTITUTE WITH SIMEONE
Not for Saúl, until maybe on Sunday. In the first morning training test this Tuesday, the midfielder from Elche took a place in the theoretical starting eleven. There are still five days to go to be consolidated, until the game in Balaídos, but it is already an indication. His ownership would relegate Thomas Lemar to the substitution, in the starting eleven and inconsequential in the last four duels, among Simeone’s conviction in him.
The possible return of Saúl is news. In the past, an indisputable headline for the coach, with nothing more exceptional substitutions each course and with seasons in which he exceeded 40 start and full games (in 2017-18 he reached up to 52 games from the beginning), he has already lost that role in 2020-21, when he was no longer so undoubted or so common in the eleven, to the point that he left the following summer on a loan to Chelsea that was a fiasco: of the 55 games available then for Thomas Tuchel, he played 23 and nothing more than twelve holder.
At Atlético, on the other hand, he had never experienced a situation like now, outside the eleven in each of the last eleven games, four of them without even minutes on the field (1-0 in Palma de Mallorca, before the break for the World Cup, and 1-3 against Arenteiro, 0-2 against Oviedo and 0-1 against Barcelona, after Qatar 2022). In the most recent six he has always come off the bench after the hour of play.
Nor did the goal against Osasuna, decisive for his team’s victory, lead to his return to ownership in last Saturday’s duel against Getafe, when he entered the field of play in the 75th minute and committed a penalty with an involuntary handball, from behind, in 81, which deprived his team of two of the three points for which they were competing to increase their advantage in fourth place and reduce the difference with third, to four points behind Real Sociedad at present.
Not even when he broke into the first team under Diego Simeone, who made him debut on March 8, 2012 in the Europa League against Besiktas at the Vicente Calderón stadium (the Argentine coach had only been in charge for three months). Saúl had gone through such a long stretch out of the eleven in the rojiblanco team as now, which can conclude next Sunday in Vigo. For now, he points to eleven.
He has not started in an Atlético de Madrid match since last November 1, in the 2-1 defeat in the Champions League against Porto in Do Dragao that completed the elimination of the rojiblanco team, which did not even reach the Europa League .
