The situation
On the Cholo board there is a name underlined for Sunday. Vinicius Junior’s . In bold, red, capital letters and any other highlight that you want to put. He is Real Madrid’s biggest threat. The unpredictability of him. The dribbling of him. Stopping him can tilt the game towards the rojiblanco side. There two options. A Nahuel Molina, his only pure right back in the first team. The other, Llorente, who in last year’s derby at the Bernabéu in December, managed to turn him off, that Vinicius was not Vinicius, and that he is not a pure right back, but he is an irreproachable performer in the function that is sent to him. Llorente or Nahuel. That is the question. The arrival of the Argentine at the moment is not what Simeone or the player himself wanted when he was signed from Udinese this summer with the ambition of plugging the Trippier hole . A serious mistake in his first game against his public, which is already his fans at the Metropolitano, against Villarreal, when he cleared a ball into the area that ended in a goal for Emery’s men weighed down Then he saw the red one. He then missed two games because of that penalty. Later he has been timid and very hesitant, a crack in defense. Nothing works out for him or, rather, everything works out the other way around. But she just got here. Patience. Another league, another system, so much pressure. Simeone flatters him from the press room. “We loved Molina, I asked for him and insisted that he come. He is the footballer that I understand we need. It is true that defensively he has to continue to evolve and it will not be the first time that a footballer has come and he has to improve one facet. We trust him a lot, he is 24 years old, a very good age to evolve and he is going to give us a lot of things in the team’s game” , he defended him before the Leverkusen-Atlético. A match in which, by the way, the Argentine once again showed all his shortcomings.
Llorente Brake
And there appears Vinicus. An undefeated Madrid. Leader of the classification, five points already above after five days. The last time Madrid set foot in the Metropolitano, Atlético beat them. But it is a victory between asterisks, the whites already champions and with the Champions League final there. It was in December, at the Bernabéu, when they faced each other. And there Simeone’s solution to stop Vinicius was called Llorente. And he complied, more than complied. And that in addition to playing the most difficult dance (stopping the Brazilian) he did it in shoes that rub against his feet , that right side in which he does not feel comfortable, it is not his thing, the bottom line is so far away, the drowned motorcycle. But Vinicius was unhinged. That plan worked for Simeone. In the session that the Argentine carried out on Thursday, in his eleventh Llorente was not at the start in the center of the field (Correa-Kondogbia-Koke).Nahuel was in the right lane but… what if the Argentine, very given to them in these games, has a surprise up his sleeve with Llorente?