On Tuesday afternoon, Alvaro Morata (Madrid, 31 years old) went to the Atlético training camp in Los Ángeles de San Rafael to say goodbye to his teammates. There weren’t many of them because those who participated in the Euro Cup and the Copa América were absent for vacation. Koke, Marcos Llorente, Azpilicueta and Riquelme were there, four of his best friends, and he wanted to announce to them in person that he is leaving to play the next four seasons at Milan. The Italian club will pay the 13 million euros of his release clause, the condition that Atlético had imposed to let him go. The captain of the Spanish national team also said goodbye to Diego Pablo Simeone and his coaching staff. The Argentine coach preferred him to stay and had communicated this to the club and to the player himself.
Morata ends his five-and-a-half-year tenure at Atlético, with a two-season loan to Juventus (20-22) in between. On July 2, in response to a strong offer from Saudi Arabia, he had posted on his social networks, in line with those of the club, a message in which he stated that he was staying. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to win with this shirt and I won’t stop until I get it,” he wrote. On Monday, upon leaving the red-and-white base camp in the Sierra de Segovia, he explained to Cadena Cope: “For me, lifting the Euro Cup is like winning a title with Atlético because it is the club I belong to and I wore its crest on my shin guards.” The change of mind occurred with the development of the Euro Cup. The criticism for his errors in front of goal that have haunted him throughout his career increased again.
After battling the low spirits he suffered at Euro 2021 for the same reason, Morata has chosen to leave Spain. He has never understood that, being a player who gives his all on the pitch in less showy tasks than scoring, he could have a large number of detractors. Even less did he understand that some of them showed him animosity in the presence of his children, his wife or his closest friends. Morata does not want to live through those episodes again and hear his children tell him that they do not understand why he is being insulted. Italy is his wife’s country, and according to him, the only one in which he has been respected. In England he had to endure being reproached for not having enough class to be Chelsea’s number nine and the most sensationalist tabloids caricatured him.
Morata was on the verge of giving up the Euros due to the emotional breakdown caused by the missed goal at Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion in the Champions League quarter-finals and the fact that Simeone replaced him at half-time. Cholo replaced him because after the mistake Morata sank and left the game. The attacker thought he could turn the situation around, but the coach’s decision was influenced by what he had seen on the pitch after the error. On Monday, when Atlético president Enrique Cerezo had already hinted that the chances of his departure were very real, Morata wrote a message on social media in which he responded to a red-and-white supporter for leaving after having said that he would not stop until he won a title as a colchonero. “Now I can’t leave and after Dortmund you all wanted to kick me out,” he replied. The painful trigeminal neuralgia that surfaced days after what happened at the Westfalenstadion finished him off. With the help of his family, his personal trainer, Adriá Carmona, medication and conversations with Bojan Krikic and Andrés Iniesta, who suffered from depressive episodes while playing, he recovered and did not give up on the European Championship.
However, in the various media appearances he has given since Spain landed at the training camp in Donaueschingen, Morata has always left the door open to leaving Atlético. “If I see that Atlético wants to sign eight forwards, I see that I am not the club’s priority. I am 31 years old, I cannot stay at Atleti to not play,” he said on June 12 about his future at Atlético in an interview with Cadena Ser. And he added regarding the issue of criticism: “For me the easiest thing is to go and play abroad. Many times my children do not understand why there are people who are so angry with their father. The easy thing last summer would have been to leave Atlético. I had better offers financially, great teams, but I have the illusion of winning with Atlético.” The latter is not being fulfilled, even though he tried to justify it with the reasoning of self-deception when revealing that the shin guards he wore in the Euro Cup matches had the Atlético crest printed on them. “When you are in a place where you cannot do well for various reasons, another option is better,” he told Cope after saying goodbye to his teammates. Criticism, his emotional well-being and that of his family, and not feeling like a priority at Atlético are the reasons for his departure.
Morata has had a hard time coping with the perks of being a goalscorer when he doesn’t live up to his expectations. He has chosen the easy option; for the difficult option, which is to continue at Atlético and in Spain, he no longer has the strength or desire to have them. It remains to be seen whether this move will also be extended to the national team.
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