Euro-Star: Simon plays key role as Athletic Club down Getafe
Euro-Star returns this week to take a look at the top performing player across the continent that doesn't play in the Premier League. That's because we cover this league in the Premier League team of the week write up with Nicolas Jackson and Erling Haaland both earning perfect 10s.
As usual, we put the vote to our X followers to determine who they'd like to know more about, with Unai Simon, Wissam Ben Yedder, David Min and Halil Akbunar all up for consideration. It was a close run vote with Simon (37.3%) and Ben Yedder (36.1%) first and second, respectively, this week.
Athletic Club endured a drama-filled 2-0 win at Getafe on Friday night as they ended a four-game winless run at the Estadio Coliseum. The Copa Del Rey winners were excellent in victory even as they ended the game with nine men following red cards to Yeray Alvarez and Aitor Paredes either side of half time.
🗳️ 𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢-𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥: Vote for which of the weekend's highest rated performers across Europe you'd like to see as the subject of our latest player in focus article 👇
— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) May 7, 2024
The Williams duo put on a show in front of the Getafe crowd as Nico set up brother Inaki to net both goals in the victory and while the pair were excellent in attack, it was Simon's performance between the sticks that deserves praise. Indeed, the Spain international earned a WhoScored rating of 9.92 in the 2-0 victory in what was his best rated performance of the La Liga campaign so far.
While he wasn't at his distributing best, completing just 11 of 41 passes, Simon's performance in goal was key in a clean-sheet attaining display as he made nine saves. In addition, one of those nine saves was to deny Mason Greenwood from the spot late on. Simon also won two aerial duels on his way to a star-player award.
Athletic remain in the hunt for a top-four finish in La Liga, though they have four games to make up a six-point gap between themselves and Atletico Madrid, but with Simon in such inspired form, they'll fancy their chances of closing that gulf. With the Euros also looming, these are the sort of showings Spain boss Luis de la Fuente will have appreciated as La Roja chase international glory.
