In what was billed as the clash between La Liga’s meanest defences, Real Mallorca went down unluckily to third-placed Atletico Madrid on Sunday afternoon. The visitors’ goalkeeper Jan Oblak kept his team in the game with a couple of blinding saves, and he set up the clearance that saw Atleti’s £85 million striker from Manchester City, Julian Alvarez, score the game’s only goal in the 61st minute.
The first half was like a chess match with both coaches setting up their sides not to lose. It was boring to watch until just before half time when Cyle Larin’s header was tipped over the bar by Oblak.
It was 0-0 at half time, but if anybody deserved to be ahead it was the home side. After the break it was pretty much more of the same until the game-changing goal. Midway through the second half, Atleti’s French centre back Clement Lenglet, who had already seen yellow in the first half, rugby tackled Larin just outside the area and somehow he managed to avoid a clear and obvious second card and a sending-off. Mallorca coach Arrasate was incandescent with rage at the incident and the referee booked him for his protestations.
Within a couple of minutes, another Mallorca attack broke down as Oblak cleared the ball upfield. Suddenly it became a race between Giuliano Simeone (the son of the Atletico coach) and Mallorca’s Pablo Maffeo, who looked at the man not the ball as he tried to foul Simeone, who shrugged off the attempted altercation, squaring the ball and Alvarez’s strike into an empty net was simplicity personified.
By now, coach Simeone had brought on four replacements as his team typically, after going a goal ahead, shut up shop and parked the bus. Fan’s hero Abdon Prats almost scored the equaliser but Oblak thwarted his effort. The result was harsh as Mallorca deserved at least a point, although there are concerns that they appear to have lost some of the spark that they had earlier in the season.
That’s two 1-0 defeats in a row, two massive schoolboy errors in defence, something which must be addressed in the forthcoming international break. Mallorca go into that break with the feeling of having thrown away three points against a pretty average Atletico Madrid side who had one shot on target and basically only had to defend. At the end, another 20,000 crowd went home feeling hard done by as this league neither forgives nor waits for anyone.
