The voluminous quadriceps of Marcos Llorente (Madrid, 29 years old) threaten to burst the shorts gathered and tight at the height of the groin. He sits quietly and chats calmly about his constantly changing position. The resistance and power of his legs, plus the versatility that allows him to perform in various positions, have turned him this season into a kind of pawn-queen for Diego Pablo Simeone. The changes in position from game to game, now interior, now right wing, have been a constant since Llorente landed at Atlético in the summer of 2019 to cover the departure of Rodrigo Hernández to Manchester City.
It happens that this season the demarcation mutations have been innumerable for Llorente during the development of the matches themselves. The same thing starts as a winger, who moves forward and then to the center of the field. “This year there have been games in which I have played in three or four different positions, depending on what the coach believed was where he needed to help and he believed that he was going to do it well,” he admits. In the League match played at the Sánchez Pizjuán, he even returned to play as a midfielder. He had been discarded by Simeone for that position already in his first preseason, which included a tour of the United States. “Several friends wrote to me to tell me that he had returned to playing as a midfielder and Simeone told me that he had done well and he was happy about it. One more position to add,” he says with a smile. For tonight’s match at the Metropolitano against Borussia Dortmund (9:00 p.m., Movistar LC), Simeone must decide if he places Llorente in the right lane or advances him 40 meters to take advantage of his arrival. Just in case it is the first and he has to mark him, he has noticed the fast Adeyemi, who would fall on his side. “He is very fast and very skilled, they play a lot for the wingers,” he analyzes.
Play in the position you play, if the game does not go in the direction that Simeone intends. The first major tactical change during the Argentine coach’s matches usually involves modifying Marcos Llorente’s position. “Depending on the first half, if he sees that the team could be better in another way, the coach changes. Many people ask me if it is difficult for me to adapt, but I have already played so much in those positions that I adapt quickly.”
In the 20-21 season, the year of his explosion and in which he achieved full international status, his 12 goals and 11 assists were decisive for Atlético to win the League. He has not repeated those numbers again, but Llorente has continued to be an untouchable piece for everything he gives to the team. “All players have a year in which everything comes in. They have their best season and never repeat it. That was a great year for me and the team. Without that support, having a good year individually is difficult. The following years I played more as a winger and I got injuries that I had not had before. It is difficult to maintain those figures due to the position.” This campaign he has six goals and five assists. For midfielders who are valued for their ability to score goals, it is not easy to assimilate that they have to move away from the area. They have to defend the status achieved without the possibility of defending their label of arrival flyers. “Football lives on goals, if you score many, you will be valued more. If you start playing as a winger, people can’t value you based on your goals, because they don’t score many. I know what football is like, it doesn’t matter where you play, they will always demand of you, but in the end you have to be consistent.”
Personal videos
Llorente perceives signs from his body that tell him that he has reached this point in the season physically well. “You can tell because you see that you have one more point if they break your back and you reach the crossroads even if the rival striker is ten meters ahead of you,” he explains. At the beginning of this season, he was surprised to see how at the beginning of some games, one of them the Metropolitano league derby (3-1), he did not go down to defend with his usual speed. Simeone noticed it and played several videos. Nobody knows this, I had an adductor problem that bothered me a lot until December, due to the injury I had before the end of last season, in which I broke it and didn’t play the last game. Upon his return, in the preseason he had to stop for two weeks. He felt like he was broken and he wasn’t. The adductor has been giving me trouble until December, he couldn’t straighten his leg to steal the ball. “Sometimes people don’t know what happens to us.”
The physical demand that Dortmund will subject Atlético to is shared with Simeone. “The most difficult rival is Borussia, who have many good things. They haven’t lost away from home for four months, they have a great counterattack and great forcefulness in the areas. “It is the team with the most intensity of the eight in the quarterfinals,” Cholo wanted to point out yesterday.
Llorente has experienced the transformation of the game in recent years that has given way to a new paradigm in which zone defenses alternate with individual duels throughout the field. “This new football demands more physically from you to be able to win those duels. That is what makes the difference today. There are very fast offensive players and if you don’t have a defender on your team capable of stopping them, you’re screwed,” he says. Extrapolating those individual duels to tonight’s game, he warns: “They come out very well on the counterattack, with fast players in all positions and good footing in the center of the field. We will have to play that very physical football to be able to beat them.”
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