AS AWARDS: Griezmann, the legend

From that documentary The Decision that Antoine Griezmann (Maçon, France, 1991) recorded in the summer of 2018 to announce that he would continue at Atlético, that he preferred to continue rather than go to Barça, his phrase did not remain forever. Him: “Man, I want to stay,” to his brother Theo. No. The one that remains forever is the one that his wife, Erika Choperena, told the soccer player. They were in the living room of her house in Madrid while he was plucking the leaves of her particular daisy between Barça and Atleti when she raised her head and snapped at him: “Here you will be history. Always. There you will be one more.” And it is, it already is. Although in between he went to Barcelona (from 2019 to 2021) to discover that his place on earth was this. The Atleti del Cholo, the one I just wanted to return to. Two years later he is the best player in the League and the 2023 AS del Deporte Award for it.

No one has that much influence on their team with their actions.. Everything that passes through your boot improves. Libre, it is Cholo Simeone’s masterpiece in football. “Lookto footballers when you you you say: ‘play free’, they don’t interpret it well. Griezmann is the first footballer I have to you you you say: ‘play free’. And he does everything well,” Simeone expressed about the Frenchman in a Reserved Space issued by Movistar+… in 2016. When Antoine had not yet been proclaimed world champion with France (Russian World Cup 2018) although he was already a finalist in the Champions League (Milan, 2016) and Europe (France European Championship 2016), where he was also the top scorer, with six goals. In the 2022 World Cup in Qatar he once again led his country to the final, being the best footballer of the tournament again, the most decisive in his actions, his ability to shine wherever he appears on the field.

At Atlético he had already taken a step back, towards that number 8 position in which he feels comfortable and in which he played when he was a child in Zubieta, where he arrived after Eric Olhats, Real’s scout, saw him in an international youth tournament in France and offered him what he had been denied so much in his homeland, so many (Auxerre, Lyon, Sochaux, Saint Etienne and Metz), for “low”: an opportunity in football. “It’s hard to forget my first game: I arrived just for the final of a small tournament against Athletic. As soon as I entered the game, I scored the winning goal with a header from a corner. That had started in style,” he said in his biography, Behind a Smile (Martínez Roca, 2017). Against children one year older. The short one who was actually one of the footballers called to remain in the history of football. At the table of the greatest.

There is an anecdote from those times that can be felt today in their football. His touch, how he handles the ball, the leather, as if it were his own skin. He learned it one day, after training, near the sea in Bayonne, where he lived with his discoverer. “(Olhats) I was not happy with my performance, I thought my reaction time was too slow. Then he took several footballs out of the trunk, turned on the headlights (of the car in which they had traveled to that place) because it was dark, and directed the light towards a small wall. Then he put several cones on the ground. Then he asked me, after each hit, to move towards the wall, to control the ball or to make a pass, but before the ball hit the ground. I repeated the exercise for a long time,” he details in his book. Before they knew it, the car battery was dead. But how much it continues to feed the footballer that he is today. “My quickness on the turf and my ability to move forward faster was partly perfected there.”

In 2023, he is the beacon of Atleti who has chained 20 consecutive victories at home, a historical record, making Atlético the team in the League with the highest circulation rate, which averages the most passes per minute (17.3 ahead of Madrid, 17 ,2, and Las Palmas, 17, according to data from @atletico_stats). Because everything happens through Griezmann, that footballer who is the second with the most assists (13) in 2023 in Europe, only behind Salah (15) and ahead of Brandt (13). Although when the winners of the 2023 Ballon d’Or were announced, and their finalists, you would have to go down, strikingly, to 21st place on the list to read their name. In the Metropolitan they cry out for it with a feminine noun always in their mouths: injustice. He also did not win the Ballon d’Or in 2018 after having been the most decisive footballer throughout the tournament, with his actions to improve and build the game, his incontestable sacrifice, and take France to the top of the podium. It was bronze.

“For Griezmann to win individual titles, the team needs a great title”, his coach admitted sincerely a month ago in the press room. That award of being the best that AS gives him this Monday. The best of last season. The best in the League. The most influential. Simply the best. Antoine Griezmann. And it continues to be this season in which he completely remembers Griezmann from 2016, the one that finished for Atlético in the Milan final against Madrid in May and he scored 32 goals. But in an overwhelming maturity, with everything he learned these years lighting up his boots. Because he left, he ended up leaving after that: “Uncle I want to stay”, addressed to his brother in The Decision. But a year after recording that documentary she took her suitcase heading to Barcelona and that train. It didn’t end up working (although in two years he scored 35 goals and distributed 16 assists). He did not stop missing Cholo and Atleti. He spent a summer calling. “I want to come back”. Even if it was difficult. Almost impossible. Because she was.

Forgiveness in the grass

That crowd that had loved him, his star, received him with whistles and objections. His first match at the Metropolitano (Porto, Champions group stage 22-23) rained very heavily on him. But he lowered his head and spoke where he should: the grass. Although he was still on loan from Barça, although in that first year nothing worked out (the worst numbers of his career, eight goals), due to an injury in December after Carvajal was tackled from behind in a derby and a subsequent relapse in January that caused a blockage to grow in his head. When he appeared in San Rafael the following summer, Cholo doubled down on him, however. One of the clauses of his loan from Barça required him to pay his purchase (40 million) when he completed one hundred percent of a few minutes already at 80%.. He started playing games from the 60′, invisible in that particular account, to show that a little Griezmann is a lot, that’s all. The best footballer in the 2023-24 League was also Atlético’s before the World Cup in Qatar, in which no one finished accompanying him. When he verbally apologized, only applause surrounded him at the Metropolitano.

His path as a footballer has a lot of Luis. If Luis was the first scorer in the old Calderón on the day of its inauguration against Valencia on October 2, 1966, Griezmann was the first in the Metropolitano, against Málaga, on September 16, 2017. Luis had been the first scorer in Europe too, against Vojvodina on November 16, 1966, and Griezmann was in the Metropolitan, against Chelsea on September 27, 2017. Now his record of goals scored with the red and white is lurking. 173 Luis did. The Frenchman is 171, already ahead of Escudero. Legend already. As Erika warned him. Forever.