Arda Turan gives Atlético Madrid life … and Real Madrid another derby defeat
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Version 0 of 1. Hidden somewhere inside that beard was the hint of a smile. Raúl García turned to him and screamed in his face. Over on the touchline, Juanfran Torres sank to his knees and shook his fists. A handful of Atlético Madrid fans, barely a hundred of them surrounded by 78,000 Real Madrid fans, went mad. Up in a glass box somewhere Diego Simeone punched the air then quickly gestured for everybody to clam down, like they could see him. But Arda Turan was already calm, outwardly at least. He’d shouted once, alerting Raúl García to his presence, and he wasn’t going to shout again. They lifted him up and he lifted a single finger. On as a substitute, he had just scored the goal that would take Atlético to another victory against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu. From 1-0 up to 1-1 and struggling, Atlético were now back in front and back in control, on course for a 2-1 victory. It was a wonderful goal too. Juanfran to Antoine Griezmann to Juanfran and a ball in to the box. A shout from Turan and Raúl García faked to shoot before stepping over it. Turan guided it coolly into the far corner, right by the past. Atlético were about to beat Real Madrid away from home two league seasons a row for the first time ever. “Right where it hurts most,” ran the headline on the front of Marca. The last time Turan had played a competitive game for Atlético Madrid he departed after 20 minutes, tears in his eyes. Four months later he stood at the side of the Santiago Bernabéu pitch, waiting. He had watched from the bench as Atlético won the league, an injured hip forcing him to depart early; a week later, still injured, he watched from the stands as Atlético lost the Champions League final. Now he watched from the touchline, waiting to return at last and against them. It was 1-1 in the Madrid derby at the Santiago Bernabéu. “We need him,” Diego Simeone had said, and Atlético’s coach had spent the days leading up to the game reminding Turan of that. And yet he might have wondered. The pressure was on. He’d not completed 90 minutes for his club since February. A muscle injury followed the hip problem and competitive games did not follow a couple of summer friendlies. Media reports noted that his pain threshold was lower than most players, a loaded phrase that carried a hint of accusation. In the summer Atlético had signed Raúl Jiménez, Antoine Griezmann and Alessio Cerci, while Saúl Niguez had returned from Rayo and Cristian Rodríguez hadn’t left in the end. With Koke and Raúl García often played on either side of the midfield, he would have been entitled to wonder if there may not be a place for him any more. But now he had scored the winner. And yet all he raised was a finger. It was classic Turan. When Atlético won the Copa del Rey at the Bernabéu in 2013, Turan fulfilled a promise to shave off his hair. Mario Suárez went at him with the clippers. At one point Turan says, half in English, half in Spanish, “Slowly, cabrón”. It was a throwaway remark but somehow it felt like an apt one. “He has tremendous calm,” Tiago said on Saturday night. In a team where the rhetoric is about intensity – and exaggeratedly so, disguising the fact that there is much more to Atlético than that – he is a rebel. “He’s different,” Simeone says. Turan provides the pausa, speeding the game up and slowing it down, playing on his own time and his own terms. That fascinates fans; there is something about Turan. Something cool. Not forced cool but actual cool. From the long hair that made him look like a Fabulous Furry Freak Brother, hacked to bits at the Bernabéu because a promise is a promise, to a gloriously bushy beard. From buying his dad a petrol station to paying the electricity bill for the entire block of flats where he used to live in Istanbul. A ballboy at Galatasaray, obsessed with Gheorghe Hagi, who claims: “My football is the football of the streets of Istanbul.” Someone who clearly cares but whose fans think he is the best because he doesn’t care about being the best. In the prologue to Juan Rodríguez’s biography of him, the AS journalist Iñako Diaz Guerra calls Turan “a hipster’s Jesus Christ”. Fran Guillén likens him to Lou Reed. “He’s different, special … you have to understand him the way he is,” wrote Picu Díaz on Sunday. Turan once claimed that he would rather give a pass than score a goal. And now here he was, smiling slightly, having just scored a huge goal. After the game, Simeone claimed that his discourse would not change because Atlético had won. They’re still not going to win the league, he suggested. Before the game, Carlo Ancelotti had been asked who rules in the capital; he replied that he didn’t care who rules now, what matters is who rules at the end of the season. And this is only week three, after all. But the result mattered enormously: the cover of AS the following day shouted: “The one who rules is Simeone.” And, no matter what happens this season, that is significant. Simeone talked afterwards about the psychological value of the victory. This is still a team under construction, he said. Atlético’s style, already evolving towards the end of last season, is being redefined. The departure of Diego Costa means that Atlético’s first pass, into the space for his run, no longer applies; Mario Mandzukic is a different type of player, “a player for the penalty area”, in Simeone’s words. It may take two men to do what one man, Costa, did last season. The mechanisms will be different and so will the opponents, demanding different solutions. Simeone’s point was that success on Saturday reinforced the shift, bringing belief. The changes that changed the match, Arda for Gabi quickly followed by Griezmann for Jiménez, were intriguing: for the first time under Simeone, Gabi, the captain, was withdrawn for purely tactical reasons. Koke moved to the middle and Griezmann was pushed up front. Atlético had looked oddly vulnerable in the first half, at risk of being overrun, and were thankful for Miguel-Ángel Moyá making two superb saves. “I didn’t like us at all,” Simeone admitted. But they remedied that and then, with the change, took control. It was time for them to play. With the summer arrivals and the doubts over his fitness, Turan might have felt that others will provide those solutions but this victory suggested that he may again be vital. Perhaps even more so; the style is evolving towards him, not away. “Arda gave us football,” Simeone said, explaining little but explaining it all. When Turan scored, it was his third opportunity in three minutes. More than there had been in the previous 70. Just like last year’s league meeting at the same ground, he was the game’s outstanding player. “The players who had been waiting to come on changed everything,” Simeone said. There is something deeper too, a more profound reason why Turan’s contribution was so great and this result was so significant. Losing the European Cup final could have sunk Atlético. Gabi described it as a “shattered dream” and it could have shattered the team, sinking them back into the depression and fatalism that afflicted them for 14 win-less years. El Pupas, the jinxed one, was a phrase first applied after they lost a European Cup to Bayern Munich in the dying seconds; 40 years later they lost a European Cup final to Real Madrid in the dying seconds. Two finals in 40 years and two minutes have cost them two European Cups. If they thought El Pupas was gone, defeated by the European League, the Copa del Rey and the league title, he could have returned. But they are stronger than that: the champions who started the season beating Real Madrid to take the Spanish Super Cup and have now defeated them in the league too. Atlético can lose and they have lost, defeated by Real Madrid in the Champions League and the Copa del Rey last season, but they’re never going to check into the Cherry Street Bed and Breakfast again. The Copa del Rey final was no one off. Their astonishing revival under Simeone has resuscitated a rivalry. In late 2011, the south stand of the Bernabéu carried a mocked-up advert, Loot-style. “Wanted: a worthy rival for a decent derby. Apply here,” it said. Since then, Atlético have been to the Bernabéu four times and won three of them. No Atlético manager had ever won three times at Real Madrid before, let alone in four years. Instead, it is Real who face apocalyptic headlines, as if the European Cup final has been quickly forgotten. By both teams. Atlético Madrid are still standing. “Arda gave us life,” said Moyá. Talking points • When is a scrappy, crappy goal not a scrappy, crappy goal? When it comes up in Vigo, that’s when. The ball hit the post and came back off Joaquín Larrivey’s thigh and perhaps his hand as he fell in a heap near the goal-line to put Celta 2-0 up. For the second week in a row, Real Sociedad were 2-0 down but for the second week in a row they turned it round. The equaliser came on 92 minutes and it was an own goal. But if that makes both goals sound rubbish, they weren’t. They had in fact been proceeded by lovely moves. Celta are well worth watching. • Neymar scored twice. Messi made them both. And Barcelona kept a clean sheet. Much like their trip to Villarreal, it took a long time for them to make the breakthrough (and some of the movements and passing they’re doing already seem aimed at Luis Suárez, who is not there yet). But, much like their trip to Villarreal, there were signs that they are getting it right. “Games at the Camp Nou never end,” said Athletic Bilbao manager Ernesto Valverde, after the game at the Camp Nou had ended. • Have a look at the table this Monday morning. It’s early and the table is a bit of a joke at this stage, sure. But, yes, that really is Real Madrid down in 13th, below Eibar and with six goals conceded, the worst total in the division. • Valencia coach Nuno said that he had the best forward line around. Which is pushing it a bit, but his team are starting to look really quite good … they’re second after a 3-1 win over Espanyol. Paco Alcácer scored again. • And Rayo did a Rayo. Results: Almería 1-1 Córdoba, Barcelona 2-0 Athletic, Málaga 0-0 Levante, Real Madrid 1-2 Atlético Madrid, Celta 2-2 Real Sociedad, Rayo 2-3 Elche, Valencia 3-1 Espanyol, Sevilla 2-0 Getafe, Granada 0-0 Villarreal. Monday night: Eibar-Deportivo. |