Antoine Griezmann: Atletico Madrid's assassin, and one of the best in the world

Every love, along with the language in which it's expressed, is different. If we are to translate, you can parse the words of the career hard-man Diego Simeone when he speaks of Antoine Griezmann into classic literature.

So that when he's quizzed on Griezmann's quality and place in the higher echelon of footballers, and replies with: "I'm not going to put him in a situation where he's among the best players; I only ask him not to listen to what's being said on the outside, to look to himself and to continue growing”, we know that he refuses to shine the spotlight on the Frenchman for the same reason that Rosemary held her feelings of Dick secret in ‘A Tender Night.’

The imminent fear in both being that speaking of the person reveals them to the world, and with that comes the imminent loss. Griezmann is going to leave Atletico Madrid in the near future - either by his own accord or because the club will receive an offer too good to pass up. That's just the natural state of these things. Atletico, as good as they have been the past few years, are still unfortunately not in the same spending realm as the richest clubs in the world. And Griezmann is playing at too high a level to be avoided.

The transfer ban can only stop the inevitable for so long.

The club will replace him, they have an uncanny ability in doing this: Hugo Sanchez-Julio Salinas-Kiko Narvaez-Christian Vieri-Jimmy-Floyd Hasslebaink-Fernando Torres-Sergio Aguero/Diego Forlan-Falcao-Diego Costa/David Villa and so on and so forth. And it may be that Griezmann's replacement is already at the club in the form of the sumptuous pair of Angel Correa and Luciano Vietto.

Regardless, the wonder of such a player like Griezmann deserves to be appreciated. His lack of neck-breaking speed, power and dribbling ability relegates him to the niche department of footballers. But what he has is the intelligence of a world-class midfielder in exploiting spaces, using simple one-two passes to beat defenders and converting chances to goals at a ridiculous pace. He's essentially a combination of David Silva and Diego Milito.

In the last game against Las Palmas, where he scored the crucial second goal, he showed all of his deadly ability and intelligence.

Just moments after popping up on the left side of the pitch, he runs beyond the last two defenders on the right, just outside and on top of the opponents’ area, before receiving a pass that takes him into the 18-yard box. Then, with two defenders facing him, he cuts inside, waits for them to bite before playing a reverse pass to an overlapping Juanfran. The full-back crosses it low across the face of goal. Vietto misses it by inches and the goalkeeper collects.

He creates the next chance by coming to collect a Gabi header. He plays the bouncing ball behind him to Vietto one-touch, fakes a run to the outside -two defenders continue running away in that direction - before sharply cutting inside to receive the ball back. As the ball comes back to him, the defender that was marking Vietto is forced to pile on him, a situation that he negates easily by just touching the ball deeper towards the center of the field - taking away three defenders with only two touches of the ball.

Koke's man, who is at the top of the box with the midfielder, slides in to try and dispossess Griezmann, who lays the through ball for his team-mate to run on to. The keeper collects again, but in his first three actions on the ball, he's created two chances.

His goal is unspectacular in these respects as well. After an Atletico Madrid goal kick a scramble of sorts, which includes numerous instances of lost possession, ensues with one of the Las Palmas defenders running to the centre to head the ball, which inadvertently goes towards his goal -leaving only one centre-back with the right full-back. It's the right-back then who heads the ball back inside as Griezmann runs beyond him.

This creates a situation where Griezmann is on the shoulder of the only centre-back with Yannick Ferreira Carrasco supporting him on the left. As he seems to do many times, Koke wins the ball from the scrambling defenders and plays Griezmann through with the last center-back raising his arm in desperation for an offside call.

Griezmann runs ahead at a comfortable speed and finishes low with the outside of the boot.

The rest of his game is like that, with the striker doing most of his work with small movements and simple, delicate passes. It's as it should be for a player tasked with the goalscoring burden for a team like Atletico: the defence is stringent enough to limit the opponent's goals and chances to near-zero, so what they need is someone effective at edging them ahead at the other end. And that person doesn't have to be flashy; he needs only to be precise and clinical.

That's what Griezmann has become for them: the ace in the hole. In a team full of battling warriors - he is himself one in contrast to how he appears - he is the unassuming assassin that sneaks into the opponent's camp to behead their commander and end the fight.

That lack of flashiness - he even cut his gloriously dyed faux-hawk - can be blamed for the world's ignorance of his abilities up to this point, but the secret is now firmly out.

Antoine Griezmann is one of the best players in the world. Unfortunately that truth, as it has been with other Atletico players in the past, is a bitter one for the club and the man who have developed him into the lethal specimen - averaging a goal every 1.6 matches - that he is today.