Player Focus: Griezmann Carrying Atletico Goal Burden as Torres Form Flops

Atletico Madrid’s 3-0 La Liga win against Elche on Saturday was routine in many ways. Diego Simeone’s side won for a 14th time in 17 home league games this season. They kept a fifth consecutive clean sheet in front of their own fans. Antoine Griezmann scored another two goals. And Fernando Torres missed another host of clear chances.

Griezmann’s double means the in-form France international has now scored twice in each of his last three league games. He’s the second Atletico player ever to manage such a feat in La Liga. The only other Colchoneros forward to do it was - you guessed it - Torres himself from weeks eight to ten back in 2003/04.

There’s plenty of irony here as Torres, who returned to Atletico in January after seven and a half years away in England and Italy, currently can’t hit a barn door. The return of ‘El Nino’ began in dream fashion, with two pretty amazing goals as Atletico knocked local rivals Real Madrid out of the Copa del Rey. He then scored again in the next round, another crisply taken goal against Barcelona. Even though his side were eventually eliminated from the Copa by the Catalans, he seemed to have fitted in perfectly back at the Calderon.

Once the adrenalin has settled down however, Torres’ record has been poor. He’s now scored just once -- a flashing header against Cordoba -- during 15 appearances in La Liga. This has come from 18 efforts at goal mustered in 693 minutes of action. There has been one assist in that time, and also an own-goal at Malaga. His overall rating of 6.59 is the lowest of all players to make 5 or more league starts in the Atletico squad.

Torres’ La Liga figures are actually almost exactly the same as during what was generally seen as a dismal spell at Milan before Christmas. He also scored just one goal for the Serie A side, while being given much less playing time, and his overall rating at San Siro was 6.54. With Atletico, he is making more tackles, winning more aerial battles, and winning more free kicks. But all in all the second half of the season is shaping up quite similarly if you strip away the emotion and focus on the stats.

Emotion is still a factor here, however, and Atletico’s fans continue to cheer Torres on and off the pitch each week. Saturday against Elche was the 700th game of his club career and the 31-year old is clearly enjoying being back at ‘his’ club. Even though his team dominated throughout against a weakened Elche side featuring two youth-teamers in defence however, he only managed 26 touches during the 90 minutes - two less than his team’s far from overworked goalkeeper Jan Oblak.

Torres’ touches included four shots [one on target], two miscontrols, one tackle, one clearance, one interception, one block of an opposition shot, and three aerial duels won. There were just ten passes at a 70% completion rate. Atletico’s number 19 was not really a factor in the game - apart from when messing up a number of golden attacking opportunities.

Meanwhile Griezmann was also having a relatively quiet game by his standards -- just 32 touches in his 79 minutes on the pitch -- but once more he was his team’s match-winner. Two of his three shots were on target, and both of these hit the net. The first was an acrobatic flying header, the second a poacher’s effort at the near post. This brought him up 22 goals in La Liga already this season [from just 68 shots], making him easily La Liga’s top scorer outside of Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. In Europe’s other top four leagues, only Lyon’s Alexandre Lacazette [24] has more goals so far this season.

The 30 million euro summer signing from Real Sociedad is now 24, a year older than Torres was when he joined Liverpool. And his superb goalscoring return in his first season at the Calderon is well clear of El Nino’s best ever total - 13 in his last campaign before leaving for Anfield.

Griezmann’s goalscoring explosion has also coincided more or less with Torres’ arrival at the Calderon in January. Before mid-December he had scored just three La Liga goals. But a hat-trick at Athletic Bilbao kicked off a run of 19 in 17 games. After playing mostly as a winger for Real Sociedad, he has also adapted really well to playing primarily as a central attacker in Simeone’s preferred 4-4-2 shape, also getting through his fair share of work off the ball.

There is undoubtedly an element of unfair comparisons here, as this Atletico team are very different from the one the then youthful El Nino toiled in a decade ago. Simeone’s side are unlikely to retain the title this year, but with five games to play are still set for their second highest points total in club history. And it has been pretty heartwarming at times seeing the obvious close feeling between Torres and the Atletico fans.

On the flipside though you can also argue that, given Torres, Mario Mandzukic and Raul Jimenez have just two goals between them since early February, there is no way Los Colchoneros would be close to securing Champions League qualification without the contribution of the younger and leaner of their blonde attackers.

Perhaps unwittingly, Griezmann told AS in February that he could remember watching Torres play for Atletico a decade ago summed up the gap between their golden eras.

“I used to do Torres’ goal celebration with my friends in the town, he was always a forward I admired,” Griezmann said. “When he arrived [back at Atletico] I told him, and asked him for some advice.”

The Calderon crowd is probably never going to love anyone as much as they did the homegrown kid who made their ‘seasons in hell’ endurable during the early 2000s. They have really taken the Frenchman to their heart too though, with ‘El Look Griezmann’ now in great demand at hairdressing salons in Madrid. Even the most sentimental Colchonero fan must know who is now the more important player to their cause.

How impressed have you been with Griezmann this season and will Fernando Torres still prove to be a good signing for Atletico? Let us know in the comments below