Marcos Llorente told ESPN that Atlético Madrid need Julián Álvarez to start scoring after the team suffered a shock 3-0 defeat at Athletic Club in LaLiga on Saturday.
Álvarez came on as a second-half substitute at San Mamés — with the visitors already 2-0 down — but was unable to turn the game around, as Atlético suffered their first defeat of the season.
It was the star forward’s first appearance since the summer transfer window closed, with Álvarez forced to stay at Atlético after the club refused to negotiate a deal with his “dream” club Barcelona.
“He [Julián] is a very important player for us,” Llorente told ESPN on Saturday. “He knows it. He’ll come in little by little, and the sooner the better, because we need his goals. We have to support him so he’s at 100% soon.”
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Atlético started the game in Bilbao without a recognised centre-forward in their starting XI, with Álex Baena and Kang-in Lee occupying their most attack-minded players, before Álvarez was introduced with just over half an hour remaining.
Jonathan David, who arrived on loan on deadline day, was an unused substitute.
“You could see [Álvarez] was doing well, he wanted to take [the game] on himself,” defender Dávid Hancko told ESPN. “In a low block, of course he’s going to lose some balls. But you could see those sparks, moments when he turned and shot with his left foot.
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“He makes a difference for us in the team. I’m really happy he stayed. The whole team, we support him, we’re going to stay behind him. We need him and I think he needs us as well.”
Atlético were undone in two second-half minutes, when Nico Williams and Robert Navarro scored in the 46th and 48th minutes respectively, before Oihan Sancet added a third late on.
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“You could say we lost it in 120 seconds,” Hancko told ESPN. “It was a really bad start to the second half… For two minutes, we turned off. I don’t know if we fell asleep a little bit after halftime. It was a really difficult two minutes. Maybe it’s good that it happened so early in the season.”
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“We threw away the game in the first five minutes of the second half,” Llorente said. “Those five minutes killed us, and then we weren’t able to put them under pressure and score a goal to scare them a bit… It can’t happen, because we had a good first half. We have to correct it and look at the causes.”
Atlético now face a tough week, travelling to Anfield to play Liverpool in the Champions League before visiting Real Sociedad in LaLiga.
