Suddenly, Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone was up and running. A little uneasily in that suit and those shoes, sliding slightly as he headed down the touchline, but he was. And who could blame him for losing his head?
He knew better than anyone just how big this was, how much of a release, what it really meant, and what lay behind it. How hard it had been to get here. How well the plan had come together — better than even he had dared imagine. Well, him and the man he was now sprinting towards wanting to embrace, to share this moment with.
If the game had been as bad as you might imagine, added time was better than you ever could. After no goals in 90 minutes, for only the second time in Champions League history, three had been scored in added time: a 92nd-minute winner for Atletico that turned out not to be a winner at all, a 96th-minute Porto equaliser via a penalty committed by the man who had scored that “winner” and then, an actual winner in the 101st. Not just any winner; Antoine Griezmann had headed in the latest winning goal anyone had ever scored in the competition.
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“This will be the last chance,” the commentator said, and it was. A corner was nodded on by Axel Witsel, and Griezmann was there to score at the far post. He turned and dashed across the south end of the Metropolitano, looking up at all the limbs in the stand, pulling at the badge on his shirt. As a crowd of players grabbed him and everyone went wild, Simeone sprinted from the bench to reach them, skidding round the corner. When he got there, he pushed his way through the crowd, grabbed Griezmann by the face, laid their heads together and, looking him in the eyes, screamed something, holding him hard.
“I love him; he knows the affection I have for him,” Simeone would say later when he had calmed down a little. And when he had hugged him some more. If Griezmann didn’t know before — which is pretty implausible given everything that had happened, all the conversations they had had, the pacts they had forged — he did now.
The ball lay in the back of the net. The clock had shown 100.19 when it got there. Not in the stadium, it hadn’t, where it had stopped at 90 because of a rule — which, admittedly, slightly obsesses this writer because it’s so absurd — that says fans can’t be trusted with knowing how much time they have actually been playing. But everyone knew it was late, very late. They were into the 11th minute of added time, and the goal was the last touch.
Griezmann kissed the badge. The game didn’t restart. There was no time left, and anyway: what would be the point? It was perfect this way, everyone knew.
This was more than just a goal later than any they had ever seen. More than the goal that gave them a first home win in this competition for 680 days — yes, really. More than the man who scored it, in his manager’s words, being “one of the most important players in Atletico’s history” (now there’s a debate). More than it being the man who had come on as a sub. It was scored by the man who always comes on as a sub.
That might sound a bit silly, which is partly because it is. So wait, let’s get this straight: The man who is one of the most important players in Atletico’s history. The man the manager loves. The man who is a World Cup winner, and probably their best player, their best-paid player. Is always a sub.
Every. Single. Game.
Yeah, that’s about it. Atletico Madrid have played five games this season, and Griezmann has not started any of them. Which makes no sense. Only, it makes total sense, like some parable of modern football, a portrait of the problems two clubs face, a morality tale featuring the mess they have made of things. And how two men (and the rest) try to make the best of it. It is illogical, but relentlessly logical. It’s literally all written there, in black and white — even if some see shades of grey.
Last season, Griezmann started six games in the Champions League and came on as a sub in three. He started 24 games in LaLiga and came on as a sub in five. But it’s not the simple percentage of the games that he plays that counts; it is the percentages of the games he plays when available that does. He missed only one in the Champions League, but he was suspended, which doesn’t count. In LaLiga he missed eight through injury, which don’t count. He sat on the bench only once; he played less than 45 minutes only twice (against Barcelona, 18 minutes, and Celta, 26 minutes).
All of which means that the quota of games is pretty close to used up already. (And if he was to get injured and miss the rest of the season, it would effectively already be used up).
If Atletico play him and cross that threshold, they will have to pay Barcelona €40m, but Atletico cannot afford to pay Barcelona. Meanwhile, Barcelona cannot afford for Atletico not to.
It’s not just the €40m in transfer fee that they would lose out on; it is that they would get Griezmann back and find themselves tied, once again, to a salary of around €20m net (almost €40m gross) a year for two more years for a player they do not want. They would have to find another solution: essentially, another destination for him. They would have to go through all that again.
Because Atletico can’t afford to have the obligatory purchase clause triggered, they have decided not to play him. Except that they want to play him, and as much as they possibly can. Which is why they are putting him on after an hour, meaning that those games are not included in his total, that those games do not count as games.
There is a neat phrase in Spanish that sums this up: hecha la ley, hecha la trampa. Roughly it means: no sooner is the law in place than the loophole is, too. Make the law, make the cheat. It is why Griezmann has come on in minutes 62, 62, 64, 63 and 61.
