Atletico Madrid continued their impressive form with a comfortable victory over Alaves on Sunday night, featuring a similarly impressive showing from one of their summer additions. Rodrigo Riquelme scored his second La Liga goal, opening the scoring after he beat his man and prodded him at the near post.
After scoring he made a gesture with his hand which has been a trademark celebration of his for some time.
“The celebration means ‘I love you’ in sign language and is for my family,” he explained to Diario AS.
“Maybe it’s the happiest day since I came back, but I don’t want to give it too much importance either. Things happen very quickly and on Friday there is another game.”
Riquelme has generally been used as a number 10 or coming off the left as an inverted winger, but Diego Simeone has decided to have him further back as a wing-back so far.
“It is the position in which I now have the opportunity. We are Samu [Lino], Javi [Galan] and me. I feel comfortable, I try to give the best I can. Sometimes it will turn out better, other times worse. I here for whatever the coach needs.”
Simeone was happy that his pre-match conversation with Riquelme had born fruit.
“We already used him as a winger in the preseason, with Lino, Galan and him taking advantage of Carrasco’s absence, which we knew was possible.”
“The flank is long, they are young, strong, and if you interpret that when you attack that space, you can be that forward. Today we spoke with Riquelme, we showed him images of him so that he could approach situations with more creativity and the truth is that he scored a great goal, which was what the play asked for, not to just take it down and try it, because he has a change of pace and is very good at deception.”
Riquelme is certainly a more unique profile within Atletico’s squad. Antoine Griezmann can go past a defender, as can Lino, but Riquelme is quicker in short bursts than the Frenchman, and more subtle than Lino.
