Lakers415 wrote:DD12 wrote:Lakers415 wrote:
Wrong again.
Koke is as much as a cm as Iniesta is. Koke cannot play in the pivot only in a 4-3-3 as the left Midfielder or in 4-4-2 as the left midfielder....Which is exactly where Simeone has played koke.....
Saul is a natural cm/dm and will be the future cm of Atletico.
There is a reason why both tiago and gabi plays so many games in the middle of the park for diego and not koke... Even last season, it was saul, not koke that played in the middle.... KOKE has rarely played in the middle for simeone......
Oliver is not a Simeone player, just like how juan mata was not a jose mourinho player. Oliver should reconsider his options because he does have fantastic potential, but under Diego might not be the best progression...(If diego valued oliver, he would never had been loaned out last season). This season, I expect a few sub appearances for Oliver, but not a starting 11 role...
Atletico has all the tools to win la liga this season with a healthy squad and new blood..... Barca has all the reason to fail and with pique's potential suspension their depth gets worse.....
oh dude. you have a lot of things to learn.
Koke is naturally MC. The reason why he played ML because of two reasons;
a) Diego wants to keep midfield busy to control and not to get counters so that players like Koke, Tiago and Gabi becomes three in the middle and Arda used to be on the left, Raul Garcia or adrian lopez was on the right when opponent was attacking. When ATM had the ball, Arda Turan and Adrian or Raul Garcia became AMC so that Koke becomes on the left and Gabi pushes forward.
b) They have never been a team who uses the crosses or wings. They always wanted to utilize from the middle and go in from there. They tried it with Mandzukic but it didn't work. Therefore, Koke was playing on the left but it was just on the paper. In the actual game, he was almost always in the middle.
Saul is naturally a mc but Diego wants to create another Koke from him. He will never become a winger like Bale but he will be another Koke where on the paper he will be seen as left winger but will move to the middle.
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Koke: Played at least 14 more accurate crosses (74) than any other player in La Liga this season
Koke was injured quite a bit last season and only played 28 games....
Koke plays as a left midfielder or left attacker because of his crossing ability and due to the fact he isn't a mobile player like Gabi or tiago or saul... Koke is strong, but mobility is not his strength.
Koke has being played as false left midfielder in the past, but Simeone is reportedly trying to make him (again) work as pure central midfielder. Of course success in this regard is not a given. There have been some previous, albeit ephimeral, attempts to make that transition work (take into account it could be more of a team-balance thing than a skill-wise one). Particularly if Oliver couldn't pass for a viable substitute of Arda in a regular basis (it is not easy to fill in his boots, but I hope Oliver can, I am a fan of his), Koke will surely remain at the pseudo-left midfielder position in order to link better with the forwards (more freedom/flexibility for the player). I don't know which position will Saúl be playing for this season (probably he won't have a fixed position, which seems to be the actual point), but he initially was a box-to-box mid prospect. Kranevitter is probably the Atlético's target for the long term DM position. If they can snap him from River Plate, that's it.
