Is Julián Álvarez ready to be Atlético's next great striker?

Editor’s Note: This was updated after Atlético Madrid’s 1-0 win against Celta Vigo on Sept. 26.

The best Atlético Madrid teams of the past 20 years all had a great No. 9. Think of Luis Suárez, scoring 21 league goals to fire Atlético to the title in 2021, fueled by a burning desire to prove Barcelona wrong for letting him go. Think of prime Diego Costa, a centre-forward battering ram who scored 27 times in coach Diego Simeone’s first title-winning side in 2014.

Before that was Radamel Falcao, the finisher’s finisher who notched 34 goals in all competitions as Atlético won the 2013 Copa del Rey. Atlético’s last leaguewide Pichichi (top scorer) was Diego Forlán, with 32 goals in 2008-09. Before him, a teenage Fernando Torres broke into the first team and made himself an icon, finishing as Atlético’s top scorer for five consecutive seasons.

It’s a list that reads like a who’s-who of the 21st century’s best centre forwards. Costa, Falcao and Forlán, in particular, spent arguably their peak years delivering in an Atlético Madrid shirt. But for every success, there’s been an equally high-profile failure, players who arrived with great expectations and a price tag to match, but couldn’t adapt to Simeone’s demands.

Jackson Martínez was rated one of Europe’s best forwards when he arrived from Porto for a €35 million fee in July 2015. Six months and three goals later, he was gone, heading to Guangzhou Evergrande in the Chinese Super League. Costa’s return from Chelsea in January 2018 — for a huge €66m fee — was a disaster. After 12 league goals in three years, his contract was terminated six months early “for personal reasons.”

There are others — Nikola Kalinic, Luciano Vietto, Raúl Jiménez — who didn’t convince. For the past two seasons, Atlético’s top scorer in LaLiga was Antoine Griezmann — an extraordinary player, but no goal machine. A year earlier as reigning league champions, their top scorer was Ángel Correa, with 12. And then there was Álvaro Morata, who said this summer on social media that he “couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to win [a trophy] in this shirt, and I won’t stop until I do it,” before promptly leaving for AC Milan.

Enter Julián Álvarez.

Joining from Manchester City for €75m on Aug. 12, 2024, Álvarez is Atlético’s second most expensive signing ever. He was the headline arrival in a summer rebuild that also included Alexander Sørloth, Robin Le Normand, and Conor Gallagher. The buzz among fans was immediate. The newspaper El País called Álvarez “the new figurehead of their project.”

This felt different: it’s the club’s most exciting signing in years, certainly since João Félix‘s €126 million arrival in 2019, and maybe beyond that. Álvarez is a World Cup winner. He’s an established forward joining from an elite club, aged 24, with his best years ahead of him. If that weren’t enough, he idolized Simeone and followed Atlético as a boy. And now, he’s an Atlético Madrid player, set to play his first Madrid derby this Sunday. (Stream LIVE: Sunday, 2:50 p.m. ET, ESPN+)

“From the first moment, everybody has treated me really well,” Álvarez told ESPN this week. “The staff, the coaches, my teammates … There’s people I know [Rodrigo de Paul, Nahuel Molina and Correa, from the Argentina national team], my friends, and having shared so many moments together, winning trophies, that makes our connection even stronger. Coming here, arriving at a place where you know people, makes everything much easier.”

It wasn’t an obvious move. Álvarez only joined City in 2022, arriving from River Plate. He was a Premier League regular last season, featuring in 36 games (31 starts) and scoring 11 goals. In two seasons in Manchester he won two Premier League titles, and the 2023 Champions League. Leaving Pep Guardiola’s team, and the prospect of countless more trophies, can’t have been easy.

“It was a lot of things,” Álvarez told ESPN. “It was a decision I had to make. I thought about it, on my own. After that, obviously I spoke to those closest to me, my family, my girlfriend, friends. And then I talked with some of the lads [at Atlético], who I already knew.

“[They said] I should come, that I’d feel comfortable, that the club was great. They said I had to experience it from the inside to know what ‘Atlético de Madrid’ means. I talked a lot with Antoine [Griezmann]. He told me the fans were great, that I was going to fall in love.”

Griezmann is the best-case scenario, an example of a creative, flair player who has excelled under Simeone and become a club legend, displaying the necessary characteristics — humility, self-sacrifice and flexibility — to thrive. Álvarez will need him as a role model; after all, the new arrival’s contribution has been underwhelming so far this season.

After Thursday night’s 1-0 win at Celta Vigo, the Argentina forward has scored two goals in 363 minutes in LaLiga, spread across seven games. His 90th-minute winner against Celta was his first decisive contribution since the third goal in Atlético’s 3-0 win over Valencia on Sept. 15. Otherwise, he has created three chances and provided no assists. A headline in the newspaper Diario AS ahead of the Celta game told the story: “Waiting for Julián.”

Simeone, meanwhile, has called for patience with his latest protégé. “He’s a good lad. He’s hard-working,” the coach said this month. “He has a lot of important things to give us. His holidays were short [in the summer], with the doubts over whether he’d stay at City or come here. He arrived here and played without much training. He went away with Argentina [during the international break] and then came back.

“It isn’t easy. We have to help him. We need him at his best. We’ll demand that of him, we know what he can give us. Let’s hope his goal the other day was the first of many.”

Álvarez is aware that the circumstances of his arrival weren’t ideal, in a summer of highs — winning the 2024 Copa America in the United States — and lows, being eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Olympic football tournament in Paris.

“I had the Copa America, then I played in the Olympics,” Álvarez told ESPN. “There came a moment when I was thinking that I needed a change in my career, a new challenge, and this [Atlético] was the best option… I want to try to find my best version as a footballer, and after the talks I had with Cholo [Simeone], he backed up what I felt.

“I don’t know if I was missing something. I was always OK at [City]. They treated me very well in the two years I was there. We won things, I had great moments. But I wanted something different.”

At City, Álvarez was never going to be the starting centre-forward. That’s Erling Haaland. With Atlético, the size of his transfer fee, and his status in the game, suggests he should be the main man in attack. But will he be? Álvarez didn’t get the Atlético No. 9 shirt this summer. That went to Alexander Sørloth, a more conventional target man, signed after his eye-catching 23 league goals for Villarreal last season.

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A look at Álvarez’s contributions suggests that Simeone is still searching for the player’s best role in the team, whether as a lone forward, part of a front two, or joining the attack from a deeper, wider starting point. A heat map of his touches in LaLiga this season shows Álvarez has been all over the pitch: up front, left and right, and dropping deep.

Against Girona on Aug. 25, Álvarez started at centre-forward, with Griezmann and Samuel Lino behind him. Three days later, against Espanyol, he started in a front two with Sørloth and was hastily withdrawn by Simeone at halftime, with the score tied at 0-0. Later that week, against Athletic Club, he was partnered by Griezmann, and substituted for Sørloth on 70 minutes, with the team chasing a goal. And last Sunday against Rayo Vallecano, he started in a front two, before switching to the left flank.

In his postmatch news conference, Simeone was even forced to deny that he’d deployed Álvarez at wing-back.

“I liked Julián on the left. He made a big effort, working hard there,” Simeone said. “Julián didn’t play at wing-back. You have to watch the game more. He played as a fourth midfielder, on the left, in a 4-4-2. His touch was a bit heavy today, but his second half was better.”

It’s an inconsistent picture, one that’s reflective of Atlético’s start to the season. Álvarez hasn’t performed, but with the team unconvincing — they have four wins and three draws in seven games, dropping more points than would-be title contenders might like — he also hasn’t been given the right platform to do so.

“[Simeone] is demanding,” Álvarez told ESPN this week. “He tries to make you find the best version of yourself. That’s what you want, to grow, to learn, and I’m always open to that. … The way he experiences football, the passion with which he sees it, what he transmits, not just Cholo but the whole team, was something that caught my attention.”

Sunday’s derby with Real Madrid at the Metropolitano was supposed to be an opportunity for LaLiga’s two big-name summer signings, Álvarez and Kylian Mbappé, to go head-to-head. But Mbappé was injured on Tuesday, expected to miss three weeks with a thigh problem, and there’s no guarantee that Álvarez will start, either.

Perhaps the Argentine forward can take consolation from Griezmann’s slow start, when he joined Atlético for the first time, in 2014. Griezmann didn’t score in his first nine games for Atlético in LaLiga. A decade later, he’s the club’s all-time leading scorer, with 184 goals in all competitions.

“I’m pretty calm,” Álvarez told ESPN this week, when asked if he felt any anxiety around scoring. “I think that if the work doesn’t pay off the next day, it will pay off over time. I don’t drive myself crazy. Yes, as a forward you want to score, and even more so if it’s what excites the fans. But I think the most important thing is to help the team in other ways. Obviously as a forward you want to score goals… I know they’ll come. You go on streaks, too. The crazier you get, the worse it is. So you have to relax.”

In the heat of a Madrid derby, that’s easier said than done. But Álvarez has experienced environments like this before. He scored for River in two ‘Superclásicos’ with Boca Juniors, and for City in high-stakes Premier League games against Liverpool and Chelsea. He knows what it’s like to score against Real Madrid, too, adding the fourth in City’s 4-0 Champions League semifinal win in May 2023.

A goal on Sunday would help convince Atlético’s fans that they were right to believe Álvarez could be the club’s next great centreforward, and not another misstep.