Diego Simeone’s time at Atletico Madrid may have come to an end as he failed to clinch a victory against city rivals Real Madrid since the return of Carlo Ancelotti to the Bernabeu last season which can be seen from yesterday’s match of Atletico vs Real Madrid.
Real Madrid maintained their flawless La Liga record this season with a 2-1 victory against Atletico in a tight and fractious match that saw Atletico supporters boo Vinicius Junior.
How did Vinicius and Valverde help the Los Blancos to win at Atletico vs Real Madrid?
The 2022–23 season has started for Real Madrid with nine victories out of nine, the most recent of which was an excellent 2-1 triumph against Atlético Madrid in the Madrid Derby and the away side an early lead with to goals from Federico Valverde and Rodrygo, while Mario Hermoso’s goal for Atletico Madrid was followed by a red card eight minutes later.
With Rodrygo (21), Vinicius Junior (22) and Fede Valverde (24), this team’s new stars, this season already seems like the start of a fresh era at Real Madrid and it’s a process that got started during the Champions League run of the previous season and is now difficult to ignore. In each of Madrid’s previous seven games, Rodrygo, Vinicius, and Valverde have scored one or more goals; Rodrygo’s first-half goal gave him three straight league goals; together, they represent the quick, direct, and clinical Madrid squad.
Manager Carlo Ancelotti praised his squad depth by saying, “We managed to play out from the back very well in the first half and both goals involved Courtois playing out. We were comfortable on the ball and in the second half we lost the focus of trying to cause them problems. We had the game under control, but we had to dig in at the end because Atlético’s goal created problems for us. Ideally you want to score lots of goals and not concede, but there’s no such thing as perfection”.
Toni Kroos and Luca Modric, two seasoned players who excelled against Atletico, are still very much in the lineup, while Karim Benzema will naturally rejoin the group once he recovers from injury. However, this was a night that was entirely focused on Madrid’s vivacious, unstoppable front three.
After a promising start from Atletico Madrid, Brazilian wonderkid Rodrygo scored the game’s first goal by putting Aurelien Tchouameni’s floating pass beyond Jan Oblak and then, despite Atletico’s late comeback, Valverde made it 2-0 and effectively ended the match when Vinicius’ low effort hit the post and bounced across goal. Those two high-caliber moments stood out amid the din of the frenetic Madrid derby.
