Antoine Griezmann’s Atletico legacy is secure but can he finally achieve his Champions League dream? | OneFootball

Amid the touches of farce, there was a touch of class. On a night when others kept inadvertently finding opponents, Antoine Griezmann produced an exquisite flick to release Julian Alvarez and send him speeding through a hole where the Tottenham defence was supposed to be to score.

That was the last round of the Champions League. The quarter-finals could be the last round in the competition for Griezmann, presumably ever. The French World Cup winner with the German surname has spent his entire club career in Spain but will cross the Atlantic in the summer to join Orlando City; had the Major League Soccer club got their way, he would have already gone. Instead, Griezmann’s long goodbye includes a final tilt at the Champions League.

It may be cruelly fitting if his 13th and last bid is ended by former employers. In 2019, after joining Barcelona, he said winning the Champions League was his “dream”. It probably felt more of a nightmare when his first season at the Nou Camp ended with the historic 8-2 thrashing by Bayern Munich. His second included a 4-1 loss to Paris Saint-Germain in Catalonia. Those two seasons at Barcelona cost Griezmann glory in La Liga, too: for one who has often shown an impeccable sense of timing and exhibited good movement, he has arguably been in the wrong place at the wrong time: Atleti have won La Liga twice under Diego Simeone, but Griezmann was a Real Sociedad player in 2014 and a Barcelona footballer in 2021.

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Antoine Griezmann assisted Julian Alvarez to score against Tottenham in the previous round of the Champions League (Getty Images)

And yet a man who may have been miscast as Lionel Messi’s long-term replacement at Barcelona will instead go as the greatest Simeone footballer of them all. “Griezmann is a differential player who has given everything to Atletico Madrid,” said a manager who has signed him twice. Atleti’s record goalscorer – displacing the 1974 European Cup final scorer Luis Aragones from the top of the leaderboard – will leave a legacy that is far greater than his slender medal collection. Super Cups aside, the 2018 Europa League is Griezmann’s lone trophy; there may yet be a second but, given the difficulty of the Champions League, next Saturday’s Copa del Rey final against his other old club Real Sociedad is likelier to provide the ideal leaving present.

The silver dye in Griezmann’s hair may be a way of exaggerating his age, but it nevertheless underlines his longevity, as well as Simeone’s. The forward is 35 now; of outfield players left in the Champions League, only Wednesday’s opponent Robert Lewandowski is older.

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Griezmann has spent his career in Spain but will be moving to the MLS at the end of the season (AFP via Getty Images)

An era is ending, one in which Atleti have been Spain’s third force, Champions League ever-presents, traded the Vicente Calderon for the Metropolitano, the instability of having 16 different managers in 15 years to the continuity of one. Some of that would not have been possible without his 211 goals; their value is not measured in silverware alone.

On and off the pitch, though, Griezmann has been great business for Atleti, even if they rather squandered the €120m they banked for him from Barcelona in 2019 by wasting it on Joao Felix; that the Portuguese singularly failed to have the same influence shows how hard Griezmann could be to replace. A reunion should give Barca regrets: why did they pay a nine-figure sum for a player who obviously wanted to operate in similar areas of the pitch to Lionel Messi? Their financial issues can be traced back to the way they wasted the Neymar windfall and more on Griezmann, Philippe Coutinho and Ousmane Dembele. Stylistically, Griezmann, more of a second striker, suits Simeone more than Barca anyway; he was more 4-4-2 than 4-3-3. But he may provide a warning for his strike partner; if now there might be both a similar and very different scenario, with Barca seemingly interested in Julian Alvarez, there could be a difference. If Lewandowski goes, there would seem to be a clear vacancy for an Atleti forward.

First, though, Alvarez faces prospective suitors, Griezmann past buyers. This is a tie, and a campaign, to transport many back a decade. 10 years ago, a Griezmann brace took Atleti into the Champions League quarter-finals, eliminating Barcelona. His decider was a penalty; but he missed another in the final against Real and, while he converted his spot kick in the shootout, it forms part of the story of his, and Simeone’s, time. They were nearly men.

Atleti may be, along with Arsenal, the biggest club never to win the Champions League, Simeone the outstanding manager of his generation not to, Griezmann the best player of his era not to. He is the 19th-highest scorer in Champions League history. In the top 20, only three others – Ruud van Nistelrooy, Harry Kane and Zlatan Ibrahimovic – have not won it.

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The 35-year-old midfielder says it is his dream to win the Champions League so can he and Atletico Madrid achieve that this season? (REUTERS)

Griezmann has other compensations, of course. After an unwanted double in 2016, losing the Champions League and European Championship finals, came a better pair in 2018, winning the Europa League and World Cup, scoring in each final and being named man of each match. His crowning glory came in Moscow. It was a measure of his footballing intelligence that he was superb in a second World Cup after being reinvented as a midfielder by Didier Deschamps. For Atleti, though, he has dovetailed with a series of No 9s.

There was a pragmatism to Simeone’s Atleti but it is not merely the more attacking ethos of the current side that means the romantics can hope Griezmann’s club dream finally becomes reality. His admirers extend far beyond Madrid. “It looks like he’s dancing when he plays,” said Barcelona manager Hansi Flick last week. Griezmann is in his last dance now. The music will stop soon, but hopefully not just yet.