Diego Simeone defends Giuliano amid the storm: Atletico Madrid and the task of stopping the bleeding at Reale Arena

I rewatched the Athletic - Atletico recording four times. Not to see the third goal, but to see minute seventy-eight, when the score was settled and a young player on the away side still lowered his head and ran back, crossing the pitch, chasing a ball no one had asked him to chase. There was no applause. No camera tracked him. Only a heel sinking into the grass and a silence long enough for me to hear the fatigue. That player was Giuliano Simeone. And that is why I am writing this piece — not because he scored, but because he ran when the match was already dead.

The pitch breathes through whistles, through heels, through the silence after a failed pass. At minute seventy-eight, Atletico's pitch breathed through a single remaining rhythm: the running tempo of a twenty-something player whom half the stands and most of the press have labelled a "favour". I was not at Reale Arena that night. I was in Nha Trang, in front of a screen, with a notebook on my right and a cup of coffee that had gone cold. But I learned one thing across sixteen years of watching football: some things only appear when you rewatch a match a third or fourth time, when the score no longer leads you by the hand.

Context: A club bleeding and a son standing between two winds

When the Goal.com report said Diego Simeone shut down every question about picking Giuliano, I read it differently from most people. I read it as a sign that the tension had spilled beyond tactics. The season is still early, yet Atletico Madrid have lost two consecutive matches — including a 3-0 defeat to Athletic Club and a loss to Liverpool. Across five competitive fixtures, they have conceded eight goals. For a club whose identity for over a decade has been built on defensive solidity, eight goals in five matches is not a statistic. It is a fracture.

I have followed Simeone's Atletico since the days when defensive discipline was a religion at the Vicente Calderon. I remember the feeling every time this team conceded two or more goals in back-to-back matches — it was rare, it was shocking, and it usually triggered a media crisis larger than the problem on the pitch. This time it is not just that. This time the story is not only about goals conceded. It is the question: who deserves to play, and why the youngest among them is the coach's son.

I want to make one thing clear from the start, because it matters for the rest of this article: the debate about Giuliano Simeone is not a tactical debate. It is a debate about power viewed through the lens of bloodline. A coaching staff can offer every professional argument, but the public stops listening to professional arguments once it suspects family is involved. That is the trap any manager faces when he promotes his son to the first team. And Diego Simeone is in the middle of that trap, at exactly the moment his team needs the firmest anchors.

In the structure of this article, I want to follow a different order from daily journalism. I will not start from the result. I will start from the people — specifically from the two names currently dominating everything at Atletico: Giuliano and his father. Then I will talk about the defence, about the gaps the news does not mention, about Pablo Barrios and Alexander Sorloth, about the away trip to San Sebastian, and about an angle I believe most media are overlooking.

What is actually happening at Atletico Madrid

To argue this properly, I must separate the issue into two layers. The first layer is results and performances. The second layer is the controversy over personnel selection. Media often blend the two, and that blending is what creates a storm more violent than reality.

Layer one: Atletico lost two consecutive matches, including a 3-0 defeat to Athletic and a loss to Liverpool. Across five competitive matches, they have conceded eight goals. I have tracked this kind of number throughout my commentary career, and I can tell you one thing: eight goals in five matches does not by itself say anything about the quality of the defence. It says something is out of sync — between midfield and defence, between pressure and the space behind it, between those selected and those absent. But to claim Atletico's defence has declined, I need data on the chances opponents create (xG, shots inside the box, pressures after losing the ball). That data is not in the source I read. So I can only say: the signal is negative, but the nature of the fault is unconfirmed. That is the honesty I must keep, even if it is less attractive than a decisive conclusion.

Layer two: Giuliano Simeone. According to the source, he has featured in every match and made three La Liga starts. He is not described through numbers like goals or assists. He is described through work ethic — specifically relentless running, aggression in duels, presence in areas cameras tend to ignore. Diego Simeone says his son's effort speaks for itself. He refuses to fuel the debate.

I understand that decision from both sides. Some fathers say too much, and some fathers stay silent. Simeone belongs to the second group. But in modern football, silence is not a strategy. Silence is only a gap for others to fill with assumption. And when that gap lies between a father and a son, every assumption becomes suspicion.

This is where I want to tell a story of my own.

A story about misreading a name

In 2026, when I had just turned twenty-three and was working as a desk contributor for an online sports channel in Nha Trang, I was assigned a match between Sanna Khanh Hoa and HAGL on matchday fourteen of the V.League. I was captivated by Van Toan's step-over — number fourteen — on the away side. He did not score. But the inside-of-the-boot touch pulled a whole silence across the stadium. I wrote a long, lyrical commentary. The editor cut it all and kept only the 1-1 scoreline. I did not argue. That night, I rewatched the tape four times and noted every expression of the fans in stand H — not when they celebrated, but when they held their breath. Number fourteen does not run back toward the goal. It runs back toward the people who still remember.

A year later, I commentated the 2026 World Cup live and mispronounced the name Luka Modric as "Mo-du-rich" three times during extra time in the Croatia - Denmark round-of-sixteen tie. I kept my voice calm and called it a dialect reading. But after the match, I sat down with the tape and realised I had missed something far more important: at minute 116, after missing a penalty, Modric retreated to his own half, stood still for four seconds, then moved to collect the ball. I saw him apologise to his teammates with his entire body, not with words. Three times misreading his name, three times I saw my own haste reflected back. That still moment — four seconds — was worth more than every fluent line of commentary I have ever written.

I tell these two stories because they connect directly to what is happening at Atletico Madrid. When Giuliano Simeone ran in minute seventy-eight of a 3-0 defeat, nothing on the scoreboard recorded that act. Any statistical analysis of him — if anyone did one — would also skip it, because it produced no goal, no assist, no chance. It produced only a running rhythm. But that rhythm is the entire life of a young player currently suspected because of blood. My notes do not hold players. They hold the moments they forgot someone was watching.

And here I must admit something uncomfortable: if Giuliano were not Diego Simeone's son, very few people would spend three seconds analysing him. He would be an ordinary young winger, running a lot, still raw, not yet contributing goals. The attention he receives is the product of a surname, not of a performance. That is unfair in both directions.

The blind spot in the story the media is telling

I want to pause here to talk about what I consider the most important thing in this whole story.

The media are telling a story about a manager defending his son against a wave of criticism. It is a compelling story, with conflict, emotion, and a family element. But it is not the biggest story happening at Atletico Madrid this week.

The biggest story is what I said above and will say again in another way: Atletico Madrid's problem lies in midfield, not in attack, and Pablo Barrios's injury may be a more important event than every debate about Giuliano.

According to the source, Barrios has a muscle injury. He is a highly rated young midfielder whose job is to screen, intercept in front of the defence, and recover the ball in the middle third. When a player like that is missing, the one who suffers is not only the midfield. The one who suffers is the defence. Centre-backs who already showed signs of instability now face more balls into the box, quicker decisions, more covering. In modern football, the injury of a defensive midfielder usually produces a domino effect: the defence worsens, the goalkeeper works more, the team loses control of the game. Eight goals in five matches is the sign of that domino chain, not a sign that an entire defence simultaneously declined in individual quality.

The other part lies with Alexander Sorloth. The forward remains absent. His absence reduces rotation options in attack and reduces the ability to create alternative solutions against deep defences. When you lack a centre-forward who can hold the ball and act as a wall, the whole attacking system must change how it operates. And if the attack changes, the midfield must change with it. One injury in midfield combined with one absence up front produces a squad stretched functionally.

I do not have the data to confirm exactly how much these two absences matter. But I have the experience of watching big clubs when they enter an early-season phase: their problem is almost never the name being discussed the most. The problem is usually the name nobody mentions — the absent one, the forgotten one, the one on the bench.

The silence at stand 19/8 is not empty. It is dense like an unspoken confession. I picture a press conference in some room at Atletico, where Diego Simeone sits listening to questions about his son, and on the other side of the city, Pablo Barrios sits in a treatment room with an ice pack on his thigh. One man is mentioned by the whole world. The other is mentioned in two lines of an injury bulletin.

The counterintuitive angle: perhaps the debate about Giuliano is the right debate, in the wrong place

I believe the debate about Giuliano Simeone is necessary — but it is happening in the wrong place and at the wrong time, and therefore it is harming the very people it should protect.

Imagine this: a young player, the coach's son, is brought into the first team. Every time he plays well, it is "obviously, because his father picked him". Every time he plays badly, it is proof of favouritism. He never has a neutral match. He is never judged on his own performance. That is not an environment for a young player to grow. It is an invisible cage made of suspicion.

Now look at Diego Simeone's side. He built a legacy at Atletico Madrid through hard personnel decisions — removing big players when necessary, forging a defensive identity despite every change in personnel. That whole legacy is now being questioned by a single decision. Not because the decision is wrong, but because the chosen player shares a surname with the chooser. This is the price of fairness in an environment where fairness is always hard to prove.

And here is the counterintuitive point I want to make: I do not believe Atletico Madrid are short of a winger. I believe they are short of a coherent defensive system. In such a system, a player who runs a lot and duels aggressively like Giuliano is a logical link, not an exception. If the team played well, his presence would be read as "high pressure from the front". But because the team is losing, the same presence is read as "a favour". What we see is not a different player, but a different context.

I learned this from my own work. A good commentator is not the one who says the right thing. It is the one who hears before others hear. When the whole stand is screaming one name, a good commentator should turn away and listen to the other names. Not because he likes to contradict. But because he knows the scream always tells the easiest story, not the truest one.

Where Atletico stand in the La Liga picture

To understand the pressure on Atletico, the away trip to Reale Arena must be placed in its proper context.

Atletico Madrid are a club expected to compete near the top and secure Champions League qualification every season. Real Sociedad are a direct rival in the race for European places. When the two meet at Real Sociedad's ground — San Sebastian, in the Basque Country — it is not an ordinary match. It is a head-to-head in the segment of the table where Atletico cannot afford to lose.

I remember past trips by Atletico to San Sebastian. It is one of the few stadiums in Spain where the pressure from the stands is not the wild hostility of a big derby, but a cold, enduring pressure — the kind that gives the away side no genuinely comfortable minute. Real Sociedad have a strong youth tradition, a playing style built on control and intelligent movement, and most importantly, they know how to make big teams tire. If Atletico arrive in San Sebastian with an unstable defence and a defensive midfielder missing through muscle injury, I believe Real Sociedad will target exactly that gap.

A win at Reale Arena, especially with a clean sheet, would immediately cool everything. It would turn "crisis" into "an adjustment phase". It would make the Giuliano debate a sub-topic. But a defeat, especially one in which Atletico concede multiple times, would turn an early-season phase into a full media crisis. And in a full crisis, people no longer mention injuries like Barrios. They mention surnames.

Here is the structural point I want to stress: when a club has a strong defensive identity — and Simeone's Atletico have built one for over a decade — a short run of conceded goals is read as an event. Not because the defensive quality has truly collapsed, but because loyalty to expectation is compressed. Fans do not see eight goals in five matches. They see the contrast between what they believe Atletico is and what Atletico is doing. That feeling is stronger than data.

The gap along the corridor

I want to pause at a detail rarely mentioned.

At big clubs, when a manager must defend his son in public, another story unfolds in the corridors and the dressing room. It is where substitute forwards may ask themselves why a young player with modest scoring output gets more minutes than they do. It is where veteran centre-backs may look at each other after a conceded goal and say nothing. It is where the truth is spoken once the cameras are off — and usually that truth is nothing shocking. It is only a barer version of the story outside the pitch.

I have stood in such a corridor. I know the feeling of a manager walking down the stairs after a tense press conference, and the feeling of a player walking up the stairs into the press room, two different cold currents crossing in a single second. Nobody says anything. Nobody needs to.

If Giuliano keeps playing and Atletico keep losing, I think part of the dressing room will begin to see him as a test of the staff's fairness. Not because they hate him. Not because he is guilty. But because in a losing collective, people need an explanation, and the name closest to the manager is always the easiest explanation.

That is why I treat the Real Sociedad match as a psychological match more than a tactical one. On paper, it is three points to be won. In the dressing room, it is a chance to prove that the manager's selections rest on work rather than blood. And the only proof football accepts is the result.

Why this story matters for Vietnamese football

Some will ask why I, a commentator in Nha Trang, spend time analysing a story in Madrid. I answer with a simple observation: what is happening at Atletico is an exaggerated version of what often happens at Vietnamese clubs.

In the V.League, family ties between coaches and players are not rare. They exist, they are accepted in some environments, and criticised in others. The difference is this: in Europe, the story is pushed up into international news; in Vietnam, it tends to sink into a coffee-shop conversation.

I have sat in many seaside coffee shops in Nha Trang, listening to older men discuss some coach and his nephew. I learned that the debate in Vietnam is not more heated, but it lacks one thing: publicly available data to cross-check. No minutes played, no running maps, no pressure numbers. Only feeling. And when there is only feeling, the debate always ends in prejudice.

So I want to propose a different approach, for both football cultures: when discussing blood ties, measure what can be measured. How many minutes? How many decisive passes? How many successful pressures? How many times covering for a teammate out of position? If Giuliano meets those metrics, the story about his father will dissolve on its own. If he does not, no face of Diego Simeone is strong enough to shield him from the truth.

This is what I have always believed throughout my commentary career: data is not there to make an article dry. Data is the only weapon a writer has to avoid being swept up by the crowd.

What the source does not say

There is one thing I must be careful about. The source I rely on — the Goal.com article — gives me no financial or transfer data. No transfer fee, no wage, no contract length, no market value. So I have no basis to speak about Giuliano's market value, or whether Atletico plan to loan or sell him.

I also have no information about the club's board. I do not know how president Enrique Cerezo or sporting director Andrea Berta assess the situation. I do not know whether closed-door meetings are taking place. I can only say that when a manager begins answering questions about his son, it usually means external pressure has reached a certain threshold. That is an inference, not a fact.

I also have no specific tactical data. I do not know Atletico's formation, or their defensive block, or where they press. If anyone reads this expecting a detailed tactical breakdown of how Atletico shift from a 4-4-2 to a 3-5-2 out of possession, I must disappoint them. This is not that article. That article needs data I do not have. And I would rather be honest about my gaps than fill them with jargon that sounds professional.

I think this matters in an age when anyone can quote a metric no one verifies. Honesty about what you do not know is a form of respect for the reader.

What I will look at in the Real Sociedad match

I have no means to travel to San Sebastian. But I will sit in front of the screen, notebook in hand, and look at a few specific things.

First, the distance between Atletico's midfield and defence in the first fifteen minutes. If that distance is greater than fifteen metres vertically, I will know Barrios's injury is leaving a clear mark. If it is under ten metres, I will know Atletico have found a replacement solution.

Second, the number of times Atletico allow balls into the channel between their centre-backs in the first half. This is a metric I always track for teams with a defensive identity: if that channel is exploited repeatedly, the defence is losing belief.

Third, Giuliano's position when Atletico lose the ball. I will not look at his goals — he is not that type of player. I will look at where he is when the team needs to retreat. If he is the first to press after losing possession, that is evidence he is selected for tactical reasons, not blood. If he stands still or retreats slowly, that is a different issue.

Fourth, the reaction of the San Sebastian crowd in the thirtieth minute. I always notice the moment a crowd shifts from silence to focus. That is when the match truly begins. If Real Sociedad shift into concentrated attack before minute thirty, I will know they have read Atletico's situation.

And finally, I will look at Diego Simeone's expression at half-time. Not what he says to the players — cameras cannot capture that. But his posture on the touchline. I have watched Simeone stand on that touchline for over a decade. There are postures that tell me he is in control, and there are postures that tell me he is trying to control himself.

None of these observations are meant to predict the result. They are meant to hear what the stands, the scoreboard and the news do not say out loud.

About another silence

In 2026, when the pandemic stopped the entire league, my contract with a local station ended after a seven-minute video meeting. I simply nodded and said "I understand". That night, I reopened the 2026 World Cup final, muted the commentary, and let the silence stand. Then I wrote "The breathing of the pitch", a one-thousand-four-hundred-word piece imagining that if Brazil - Germany had been played in an empty stadium, how Ronaldo would have run toward the stands when no one answered. The piece was shared over two thousand times.

I think about that piece every time I read about a manager trying to defend his son in a packed press room. Diego Simeone sits in a room full of cameras, lights, microphones, and faces waiting for an answer. He refuses that answer. He leaves a silence behind. And I, from Nha Trang, sit and listen to that silence the way I listen to the breathing of an empty pitch.

I do not think that silence is an act of cowardice. I think it is an act of protection. But I also think that silence is a strategic mistake. In football, silence is never neutral. Silence is always a statement, and in this case, it states that the father does not want to talk about his son, which most listeners will translate as "because there is something to hide".

Another manager might choose to say more. He might offer numbers: Giuliano's average kilometres run, successful presses, pass completion in the final thirty metres. Those numbers are not eloquent, but they counter suspicion more effectively than any sentence. But Diego Simeone is not a man of numbers. He is a man of symbols — of still moments on the touchline, of small nods after a conceded goal. And symbols, in this case, are a weak weapon.

What I believe

I believe the story of Giuliano Simeone will not be decided by what is said in the press room, but by what happens in San Sebastian.

If Atletico keep a clean sheet and win, I believe this story will temporarily submerge. Headlines will move to positive topics. Diego Simeone will again be a tactical genius in the analysis pieces.

If Atletico concede and lose, I believe this story will escalate. There will be headlines about "dressing-room instability". There will be pieces about "Simeone losing the vote of confidence". And at the centre of all those headlines will be a young player in his twenties, who only wants to run, who still lowered his head and ran back at minute seventy-eight of a match whose score was already settled.

And if that happens, I want the reader of this piece to remember one thing: that story is not about him. That story is about a team losing its sense of defending, about a midfielder sitting out with a muscle injury, about a centre-forward absent with no clear return date, and about a manager trying to protect his legacy in the most confusing way of speaking.

Sometimes the ball is simply the ball. But people, when they love football, rarely see it that way. We always want to find a story behind it. And when a story is available — a father, a son, a club bleeding — we always choose that story, even when the ball is simply a ball no one ran toward.

I will sit in front of the screen this weekend with my notebook and a fresh cup of coffee. If the match is good, I will note the passes. If the match is poor, I will note the postures. The match ends, the pitch still breathes. And I am still sitting there, listening.

A thought moving forward

In sixteen years of watching football, I learned that a club does not collapse because a manager picks his son. It collapses when the question about that becomes larger than the question about how the team plays. Atletico Madrid can lose to Real Sociedad and still be fine. They can beat Real Sociedad and still be unstable. What decides their season is not the result of one match, but whether they can hear one another again in the dressing room — something that can only be sensed through silence, not measured by any metric.

Yes, I am still listening. And I am still noting the moments no one notices. Because at the end of every story about blood, about results, about press conferences and headlines — there remains a young player lowering his head and running back, chasing a ball no one asked him to chase.