The best Atlético Madrid teams of the past 20 years all had a great No. 9. Think of Luis Suárez, scoring 21 league goals to fire Atlético to the title in 2021, fueled by a burning desire to prove Barcelona wrong for letting him go. Think of prime Diego Costa, a centre-forward battering ram who scored 27 times in coach Diego Simeone’s first title-winning side in 2014.
Before that was Radamel Falcao, the finisher’s finisher who notched 34 goals in all competitions as Atlético won the 2013 Copa del Rey. Atlético’s last leaguewide Pichichi (top scorer) was Diego Forlán, with 32 goals in 2008-09. Before him, a teenage Fernando Torres broke into the first team and made himself an icon, finishing as Atlético’s top scorer for five consecutive seasons.
It’s a list that reads like a who’s-who of the 21st century’s best centre forwards. Costa, Falcao and Forlán, in particular, spent arguably their peak years delivering in an Atlético Madrid shirt. But for every success, there’s been an equally high-profile failure, players who arrived with great expectations and a price tag to match, but couldn’t adapt to Simeone’s demands.
Jackson Martínez was rated one of Europe’s best forwards when he arrived from Porto for a €35 million fee in July 2015. Six months and three goals later, he was gone, heading to Guangzhou Evergrande in the Chinese Super League. Costa’s return from Chelsea in January 2018 — for a huge €66m fee — was a disaster. After 12 league goals in three years, his contract was terminated six months early “for personal reasons.”
There are others — Nikola Kalinic, Luciano Vietto, Raúl Jiménez — who didn’t convince. For the past two seasons, Atlético’s top scorer in LaLiga was Antoine Griezmann — an extraordinary player, but no goal machine. A year earlier as reigning league champions, their top scorer was Ángel Correa, with 12. And then there was Álvaro Morata, who said this summer on social media that he “couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to win [a trophy] in this shirt, and I won’t stop until I do it,” before promptly leaving for AC Milan.
Joining from Manchester City for €75m on Aug. 12, 2024, Álvarez is Atlético’s second most expensive signing ever. He was the headline arrival in a summer rebuild that also included Alexander Sørloth, Robin Le Normand, and Conor Gallagher. The buzz among fans was immediate. The newspaper El País called Álvarez “the new figurehead of their project.”
This felt different: it’s the club’s most exciting signing in years, certainly since João Félix‘s €126 million arrival in 2019, and maybe beyond that. Álvarez is a World Cup winner. He’s an established forward joining from an elite club, aged 24, with his best years ahead of him. If that weren’t enough, he idolized Simeone and followed Atlético as a boy. And now, he’s an Atlético Madrid player, set to play his first Madrid derby this Sunday. (Stream LIVE: Sunday, 2:50 p.m. ET, ESPN+)
“From the first moment, everybody has treated me really well,” Álvarez told ESPN this week. “The staff, the coaches, my teammates … There’s people I know [Rodrigo de Paul, Nahuel Molina and Correa, from the Argentina national team], my friends, and having shared so many moments together, winning trophies, that makes our connection even stronger. Coming here, arriving at a place where you know people, makes everything much easier.”
It wasn’t an obvious move. Álvarez only joined City in 2022, arriving from River Plate. He was a Premier League regular last season, featuring in 36 games (31 starts) and scoring 11 goals. In two seasons in Manchester he won two Premier League titles, and the 2023 Champions League. Leaving Pep Guardiola’s team, and the prospect of countless more trophies, can’t have been easy.
“It was a lot of things,” Álvarez told ESPN. “It was a decision I had to make. I thought about it, on my own. After that, obviously I spoke to those closest to me, my family, my girlfriend, friends. And then I talked with some of the lads [at Atlético], who I already knew.
“[They said] I should come, that I’d feel comfortable, that the club was great. They said I had to experience it from the inside to know what ‘Atlético de Madrid’ means. I talked a lot with Antoine [Griezmann]. He told me the fans were great, that I was going to fall in love.”
Griezmann is the best-case scenario, an example of a creative, flair player who has excelled under Simeone and become a club legend, displaying the necessary characteristics — humility, self-sacrifice and flexibility — to thrive. Álvarez will need him as a role model; after all, the new arrival’s contribution has been underwhelming so far this season.
Ahead of Thursday night’s game at Celta Vigo (stream LIVE: 2:50 p.m. ET, ESPN+), Álvarez has scored one goal in 327 minutes in LaLiga, spread across six games. While important for Álvarez, it wasn’t decisive: the late third in Atlético’s 3-0 win over Valencia on Sept. 15. Otherwise, he has created two chances and provided no assists. A headline in the newspaper Diario AS this week told the story: “Waiting for Julián.”
Simeone, meanwhile, has called for patience with his latest protégé. “He’s a good lad. He’s hard-working,” the coach said this month. “He has a lot of important things to give us. His holidays were short [in the summer], with the doubts over whether he’d stay at City or come here. He arrived here and played without much training. He went away with Argentina [during the international break] and then came back.
“It isn’t easy. We have to help him. We need him at his best. We’ll demand that of him, we know what he can give us. Let’s hope his goal the other day was the first of many.”
Álvarez is aware that the circumstances of his arrival weren’t ideal, in a summer of highs — winning the 2024 Copa America in the United States — and lows, being eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Olympic football tournament in Paris.
“I had the Copa America, then I played in the Olympics,” Álvarez told ESPN. “There came a moment when I was thinking that I needed a change in my career, a new challenge, and this [Atlético] was the best option… I want to try to find my best version as a footballer, and after the talks I had with Cholo [Simeone], he backed up what I felt.
“I don’t know if I was missing something. I was always OK at [City]. They treated me very well in the two years I was there. We won things, I had great moments. But I wanted something different.”
At City, Álvarez was never going to be the starting centre-forward. That’s Erling Haaland. With Atlético, the size of his transfer fee, and his status in the game, suggests he should be the main man in attack. But will he be? Álvarez didn’t get the Atlético No. 9 shirt this summer. That went to Alexander Sørloth, a more conventional target man, signed after his eye-catching 23 league goals for Villarreal last season.
