Both in defeat and then in triumph, Antoine Griezmann has rapidly become the player with whom the working-class half of Madrid identifies.
Last Wednesday, Griezmann was hauled off the field while Atletico Madrid’s Champions League game against Real Madrid still hung in the balance, a move that led to substantial criticism from Atletico fans and television commentators after the club was eliminated with a 1-0 loss at Real’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.
On Saturday, this time in Atletico’s Vicente Calderón Stadium, Griezmann scored twice in a 3-0 Liga win over Elche. And once again, he was replaced before the end of the game.
That happens a lot to Griezmann.
In his first season with Atletico, the young Frenchman has completed barely a handful of the 32 games he has appeared in. He has been substituted five times when he was within a goal of completing a hat trick. After the game against Elche he tweeted, as he often does, that he was happy to help the team. This modesty, which seems genuine, is his charm. Griezmann has scored 22 times in the league this season, eight of them in the past five games. He is gathering the following of a modern Pied Piper among the 10,000 children who got to see that game free as part of the club’s children’s day celebration called “Día del Niño Atlético.”
Parents might be concerned, though if their kids ask for a Griezmann haircut - shaved on the sides and dyed blond on the top.But while there remains something boyish about Griezmann, Atletico Coach Diego Simeone talks of the real men in his line-up. “What I liked most was the reaction to the hit of the other day,” he said. “It is not easy to react,” Simeone continued. “Last year we lost the Champions League final in May and won the Spanish Super Cup in August. And on Wednesday we lost, and today we are winning. The team has men and when you have men, they respond. They are there, to try, once again, to keep us among the top three of the League.”
Simeone concluded: “If Real Madrid and Barcelona get to the Champions League final, we would be talking about being in the best league in the world. We’re right behind them, bothering them a bit, with humility and always working and competing more to recover fast after the other day’s difficult defeat.”
It was a lot of talk without mentioning by name a single player. Simeone made no attempt to address the charges that he lost the Champions League quarterfinal by taking Griezmann off with 15 minutes to go in a scoreless game.
Atlético was down to 10 men after Arda Turan was sent off, and Simeone appeared to settle for extra time and penalty kicks when he replaced Griezmann with an extra defender. So when Griezmann scored twice against Elche - the first time with an acrobatic leap to head the ball and the second with a fearless and instinctive stab of his foot as the keeper rushed toward him - the critics felt they had ammunition for their views.
Some go so far as to say that Simeone has taken his team as far as it can go by essentially playing spoiler tactics. He has been justifying the negativity by comparing Atlético’s relatively modest payroll with the immeasurably bigger ones of Real and Barcelona.
But there is another way of looking at things. Maybe Simeone, who persuaded Atletico to pay 30 million euros, or $32.5 million, to buy Griezmann from Real Sociedad, knows better than anyone just what his new player is capable of. The lean and quick Griezmann, now aged 24, lacks the physical power of Diego Costa, the striker whom Atletico sold to Chelsea last summer. For that matter, Atletico’s other strikers, Mario Mandzukic and Fernando Torres, also do not possess Costa’s ability to put fear into opposing defenders.
The truth appears to be that Mandzukic is a battling bull of a player who lacks the speed to evade tight defenders. And Torres is a yard slower, and considerably less sharp and confident, than he once was. Griezmann, a left winger, is something else. Simeone sees something far more elusive and more potent in him, as a striker on the wings or down the middle. The goals are evidence of that.
Why, then, does the coach take him off so often? Because Griezmann’s build suggests that he is no workhorse. He never has been. In his boyhood in the eastern French city of Macon, Griezmann was a small and slender child.
No French clubs wanted him, with none willing to take the chance like Barcelona did on little Lionel Messi when he was 13. Instead, it was a French scout in the Basque country who persuaded both Real Sociedad and the boy’s parents that Antoine could, given time and a suitable education, develop into a top player. It took years of patience before Griezmann, who stopped growing once he reached 5-foot-8, could work his way into Sociedad’s line-up, and then it was predominantly as a flyweight winger.
Atletico and Simeone have a knack of finding strikers (and also goalkeepers) whom others overlook. The 30 million euros invested 10 months ago will be worth a lot more if, as the grapevine suggests, bigger clubs come knocking on Atletico’s door, asking for Griezmann.
Simeone has shown that even if his new star needs protection from playing three full games a week, he can be a game winner if kept sharp and fresh. It makes sense that a coach knows more about his flock’s health than any outsider might. And it would make no sense for Simeone, who has signed up for another five years with Atletico, to burn out his star by overplaying him.