Simeone defends Giuliano as Atletico Madrid try to stop the rot in San Sebastian

Diego Simeone walked into the pre-match press room before the trip to the Reale Arena, and the first question had nothing to do with the eight goals Atletico Madrid have conceded in five competitive fixtures. It was about his son. He answered briefly: Giuliano's work speaks for itself, the boy runs without stopping, and he would not pour fuel on a debate he considers outside football. Then he moved on to Real Sociedad, to the defence, to stopping the rot. The way a manager answers a question about his own son usually reveals more than the answer itself. At Atletico Madrid right now, pressure arrives from two directions at once: results and team selection. That double pressure is more dangerous than pure points-based pressure, because it forces a coach to defend a person before he has had the chance to fix a system. Atletico lost 3-0 to Athletic Club. Then they lost to Liverpool. Two consecutive defeats, adding up to eight goals conceded in the first five competitive matches of the season. For a club whose identity is built on conceding little, that signal matters more than any attacking metric. One caveat must be stated immediately: the source provides no xG or xGA, so it is impossible to separate goalkeeping error from structural defensive failure. But eight goals in five games is a number no back line wants to look at twice. The trip to San Sebastian is therefore no ordinary fixture. The Reale Arena is where Real Sociedad, a direct rival for European places, can turn someone else's crisis into their own advantage. Atletico do not need a beautiful performance. They need a clean result. On personnel, the equation narrows further. Pablo Barrios has a muscle injury. Alexander Sorloth remains absent. A central midfielder and a centre-forward, the two positions most responsible for controlling the tempo of a match, are both unavailable. That shifts the burden onto the remaining starters and reduces Simeone's room to rotate during a congested schedule. That is when the Giuliano story becomes relevant. Giuliano Simeone has featured in every match this season, including three La Liga starts. That is the fact. Everything else is interpretation. One group of supporters calls it favouritism. Another calls it a reward for intensity. Both readings skip the more important question: what is he being used to do inside the structure? Every tactical shape is a confession: coaches hide what they fear. When a defence ships eight goals in five matches, the first reflex of any coach is to reinforce the layer above it. Not by dropping the whole team deep, but by denying the opponent the time to lift their head. That is the job of a winger who runs without stopping. Two very different things need separating here: running a lot, and pressing with structure. Running a lot burns your own energy. Structured pressing burns the opponent's time. Used correctly, Giuliano belongs to the second category: the player who triggers pressure, who forces opposing defenders into long passes instead of short ones, who turns an ordinary Real Sociedad build-up into a midfield contest. In my own tracking work, I always count three things before judging a wide player: the distance between the two central midfielders when the team loses the ball, how often the winger narrows to block a passing lane, and the space he leaves behind him when he pushes high. When I followed Morocco at the 2026 World Cup, I logged an average distance of 12.4 metres between their two central midfielders, a gap that turned the midfield into a continuous shield in front of the box. At Atletico today, Barrios's absence makes that same figure hard to hold, which is why a winger ends up covering a hole he never created. This is the tactically interesting part. A winger can hide a gap for 45 minutes. But when the match drifts past the 70th minute and Real Sociedad start pushing the ball wide in search of cut-backs, individual intensity stops substituting for collective structure. That is when those eight goals show their true face: the problem sits in the distances between lines, not in a shortage of runners. Data gives us a map, but only chaos points to the real road. Numbers like eight goals in five matches tell me the defence has a problem. They do not tell me where the problem is. To find that, I have to rewatch every turnover and ask: where did Atletico lose the ball, where did the opponent receive it, and how many metres of space remained between the carrier and the goal. Without that step, any conclusion about Simeone and his son is guesswork dressed in statistics. I believe in structure, but structures exist to collapse; a good analyst is the one who predicts the exact point of collapse. For Atletico this season, that point most likely falls between the 60th and 75th minute, the phase when the midfield loses its screening capacity and defenders face angled runs directly. If the game at Real Sociedad stays goalless deep into the second half, watch that window. When Croatia completed their comeback, I understood that football is not mathematics but ethics. The story at Atletico has the same nature. A father standing in public to speak about his son, in the middle of a two-game losing run, is acting on a standard rather than on a probability. He may be wrong professionally. But how a person responds in a crisis reflects character, and that is not captured by any model I have ever run. One thing should be said plainly, because it is the blind spot of the current debate: people are arguing about the surname of a player while the problem sits somewhere else entirely. Nepotism is a symptom that is easy to see, easy to say and easy to write about. It does not explain why a club with a defensive identity has conceded eight goals in five matches. Nor does it explain why an academy midfielder such as Barrios has become so important that his injury shakes the whole system. The second blind spot sits with the opponent. Real Sociedad do not need to win by playing better football. They only need to stretch the game, push the ball into wide areas and wait for the moment Atletico's midfield disconnects from its defence. At home, with a crowd behind them, they have the patience to wait. A team in crisis usually makes life difficult for itself before the opponent gets the chance. One principle I always impose on myself is worth repeating: judge by role, not by reputation. Simeone's name does not protect his back line. No star's name explains eight goals conceded. Only positioning, the distances between lines and the timing of decisions explain that. So which yardstick should this match be measured against? I will track three things. First, whether Atletico keep a clean sheet, because one shutout at the Reale Arena would immediately restore part of the defensive credibility they have lost. Second, the average distance between their two central midfielders in the first half, an indirect measure of the shield in front of the box. Third, how often pressure from the flank forces Real Sociedad into long passes during the opening 30 minutes, a sign that Giuliano's work is generating real value rather than just an image. No result in San Sebastian can answer the larger question: is Atletico patching a hole with individual effort, or rebuilding the structure from within? A win can bury that question for a few more weeks. A defeat will force everyone to answer it. And in either case, the first man asked will still be the one who chose not to say much about his son.