Chronicle of Atlético de Madrid – Girona: 3-0

This Sunday, Atlético de Madrid opened their winning record in the EA Sports 2024-2025 Liga after beating Girona FC 3-0 with authority at the Cívitas Metropolitano stadium, a match in which the rojiblancos were superior to a rather innocent team. Diego Pablo Simeone’s team won in front of their fans in the national championship. After a massive presentation last Wednesday of all his recruits in his stronghold, this time he had to transfer his enthusiasm to the field of play and against a theoretical direct opponent as we saw last season. The most applauded and applauded a few days ago was Julián Álvarez and “La Araña” started for Atlético, although he did not have much notoriety. He left some flashes of his quality, but offensively it was not what is expected of a player still in the adaptation phase. Conor Gallagher also made his debut in the second half, also without much impact beyond some hard-fought runs that pleased the crowd. The third and fourth ranked teams of last season did not have a great match, surely due to the speed with which the duel came to them, far from the two that played in 2023-2024. Girona paid dearly for a mistake by Paulo Gazzaniga and was no longer able to overcome the home team, who dominated at the beginning and end of a second half of increased domination by the visitors. Simeone chose to move his eleven a lot, either to distribute the energy in a busy start to the campaign or to make some adjustments to improve the performances offered in Villarreal’s 2-2. Álvarez left no room for Alexander Sorloth, while captain Koke, Axel Witsel or Reinildo were also substitutes, the latter to leave the left wing to a more offensive player like Rodrigo Riquelme. But neither Atlético nor Girona managed to do too much damage. Except for a great opportunity from Samu Lino at the start of the game that Gazzaniga saved well, the rest of the minutes were balanced and with little work on the goals except in the final stretch that would largely decide the game. Thus, Gazzaniga misjudged an exit outside the area and had to hit the ball with his hand, an action punished personally only with a yellow, but with the 1-0 collectively. Antoine Griezmann committed the foul at ground level and placed himself on the side of the “Gironí” goalkeeper to open the scoring in the 39th minute. This goal shook the game at times and Abel Ruiz had a good opportunity to equalize against Jan Oblak, while, immediately after. , Riquelme, on his heels, could have made it 2-0. LLORENTE, INFALLIBLE, INCREASES THE DISTANCE Michel had to reorganize his players to try to improve and be more dangerous offensively in the second half, but he immediately found himself at 2-0. Griezmann, much more protagonist after the break, launched a quality transition in the quarry of Marcos Llorente. The winger advanced unopposed and ended up launching a powerful shot that surprised Gazzaniga who perhaps could have done something more, but found the ball above him. With more advantage on the scoreboard, “Cholo” decided to start moving his pieces and called on Koke and Gallagher. His counterpart responded with a triple change (Solís, Portu and the debutant Miovski) and Girona improved somewhat, also helped by the retreat to find spaces for the locals. The Catalan team dominated much more and had good minutes, which were not rewarded in the form of a goal, despite some promising actions. The passage of minutes was heavy and Atlético found themselves with a much more comfortable final where they still had the energy to launch a brilliant counterattack with the tireless Llorente assisting Koke to close the score. TECHNICAL SHEET. –RESULT: ATLÉTICO DE MADRID, 3 – GIRONA, 0 (1-0, at halftime). –LINEUPS. ATLETICO DE MADRID: Oblak; Azpilicueta, Le Normand, Giménez; Llorente, De Paul (Koke, min.59), Barrios, Riquelme (Gallagher, min.58); Griezmann (Correa, min.81), Lino (Reinildo, min.68); and Julián Álvarez (Sorloth, min.81). GIRONA: Gazzaniga; Arnau, David López, Blind, Gutiérrez; Romeu (Solís, min.59), Martín (Portu, min.59), Herrera; Tsygankov (Almena, min.68), Ruiz (Miovski, min.59) and Gil. –GOALS. 1-0, minute 39. Griezmann. 2-0, minute 48. Llorente. 3-0, minute 94. Koke. –REFEREE: Martínez Munuera (C.Valenciano). He booked De Paul (min.25), for Atlético, and Ruiz (min.28), Gazzaniga (min.38), Romeu (min.55), for Girona. –STADIUM: Cívitas Metropolitano. 60,414 spectators.