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The Portuguese prodigy is the signing of the record of the Spanish national team, but his first season was full of potholes: he proved to be a player for the big stage.
At Benfica’s internship, south of the Tagus and some distance from the center of Lisbon, a familiar face made the impression on Tuesday.
Still childish, Joao Félix has evolved a lot since it is his daily trade and Benfica has known him as the highest talented teenager they have noticed in many years.
These days, they joke that the younger brother Hugo, 16 years old and registered in Benfica’s youth formula, can prove even better. That would do Benfica good if he did. Thirteen months ago, the sale of Joao Félix to Atletico Madrid generated more than 120 million euros (518 million dirhams), a significant part of which went to the Lisbon club.
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Atletico has borrowed Benfica’s educational floor from the Seixal striker from the Quarterfith quarter-finals of Thursday night against RB Leipzig in Lisbon. Although closed-door situations around the improvised conclusion of the Champions League mean that Felix’s home is diminished, there is some fascination with the role that the 20-year-old prodigy will play.
It turns out that he is responding to the high level of his home country: last summer he debuted abroad, in Porto, in the top competition of the UEFA League of Nations, and helped Portugal win the prize.
It’s been a bit bumpy ever since. The signing of Atletico not only carried with the weight of a heed of a great sum at a tender age, but also the responsibility, in part, for the replacement of Antoine Griezmann, a wonderful Atletico who went to Barcelona.
Felix started quite well with hints that, in Athletic’s all-time highest-loved team, he may be the key guy in a cautious and counter-attacking taste replacement that has become his trademark with Diego Simeone. Felix can be dazzling with the ball, preferably betting next to an important striker.
He is also young and still adapts to a club that, under Simeone’s long transformative management, was designed to thrive against matches facing a higher percentage of possession. This requires Atletico players to expand physical strength and endurance to hunt and chase, regardless of their position on the field.
Felix’s first season asked him for a lot and interrupted by injury. His 8-goal kickback in 35 games, between competitions, seems narrow along with the 20 he has accumulated in what was his first crusade as a senior player, 2018-19, with Benfica.
He is soft alongside Griezmann’s record for an austere and unteered atleper: the Frenchman has scored 20 goals, at least. But it is less bland when it is noted that, by far, Atletico’s most sensible goalscorer in this room is Alvaro Morata with his 16 out of 32.
There have been difficult times for everyone. At one point, 2014 La Liga champion Atlético struggled to finish in the four most sensitive.
Back to the wall, the family and physically powerful Atletico beat Liverpool 3-2 in the extra time, getting rid of the least defeated club of the Champions League season.
Felix played a component in this epic comeback, but his hero Marcos Llorente, the incredibly reinvented midfielder as a goalscorer. Llorente’s contributions to Atletico’s unbeaor 18-game streak, helping them to reach 3rd place in La Liga, made him a more likely starter against Leipzig than Felix.
In the absence of Angel Correa, who tested positive for Covid-19 this weekend (he is asymptomatic) and therefore did not do so with Portugal, the winger Yannick Carrasco is also the favorite for a spot in Simeone’s XI.
Felix could well start on the bench of Lisbon, a city that has a special resonance for others on the athletic field. It was at the Estadio da Luz in 2014, where Simeone guided Atlético to the discount time for the club’s first European Cup, denied through a last purpose by Sergio Ramos, and then 3 more heartbreaking purposes of Real Madrid in addition.
For players like Koke, the captain, and Diego Costa, the injured limping striker early in the night, Lisbon will stimulate bittersweet memories. Two years later, they lost some other Champions League final in Milan, also against Real Madrid, and also in extremis, beaten on penalties.
“Football owes Atlético a Champions League,” said the club’s president, Enrique Cerezo. “We’ve had it handy before, and it’s been ripped off. Maybe that’s the year it happens.