How Arda Turan’s move has changed how both Barcelona and Atletico Madrid play

This weekend it is not hard to identify the biggest game in Spanish football. The league’s top two sides play at the Nou Camp on Saturday afternoon, with Barcelona hoping to finally break open a slender advantage over Atletico Madrid (the two sides are currently level on 48 points, although Barca have a game in hand).

As notable as games between these two sides have been ever since Diego Simeone turned Los Colchoneros into a viable title contender, this meeting will be particularly significant for Arda Turan, the former Atletico midfielder. Up to speed with his new team after six months of enforced exile, he will face his old team for the first time on what will also be his 29th birthday.

"I still love Atletico a lot," Turan said this week. “It will be a special game, unique. I believe that both before and after the game I will be nervous.”

The news that Barcelona would be signing one of their rivals’ best players – in echoes of Bayern Munich’s pillaging of Borussia Dortmund’s top talent – led to fears about the competitiveness of La Liga, that the long-standing Barca-Real Madrid duopoly that Atletico had suddenly started to breach would be restored to supremacy once more.

So far, however, that has not happened – indeed Atletico have arguably looked better in the post-Arda era, and currently sit four points clear of their city rivals.

"I've seen Atletico grow, and in some ways they are now considerably better than the team which won the league,” Michael Robinson, the ex-Ireland striker who is now a leading pundit in Spain, told BBC Sport. “[Simeone] has incorporated players with more natural talent and they can be very eloquent with the ball.”

So how has the Turan move changed both sides?

According to a certain, rather cynical, section of the media – Turan’s desire to join Barcelona was based on nothing more than naked self-interest.

“To earn more for doing less,” was how Marca described the player’s motivation. “It is many people’s dream and among them, apparently, is Arda Turan.”

While it is undoubtedly true that Turan would earn more at Barcelona, a club whose resources are only rivalled by Real Madrid, the press perception seemed to be that the midfielder had grown tired (literally and figuratively) of his role in Simeone’s intense system, and eyed a move to Barcelona as a chance to be a more expressive attacker.

“He has given everything while wearing the Rojiblanco, but also has paid for the physical wear and tear that marks Cholo’s system,” Marca continued. “In that sense he would prefer a system that liberates him from defensive duties, or so he says.”

That is not entirely fair – Barcelona are not so good that their midfield players are allowed simply to coast along when they don’t have the ball – but there was perhaps a grain of truth to it, for it cannot be denied that Atletico’s midfield, for whom Turan was an integral part, was perhaps the most hard-working in European football for a number of seasons.

The greater motivation, of course, is that few players get the chance to play for Barcelona – to work alongside the likes of Lionel Messi and Neymar and entertain realistic ambitions of winning two or three trophies every single season. Turan gave up six months of his prime – due to the end of Barca’s transfer ban, he could not be registered until January – not for the money or the lighter workload, but for the opportunity to win countless trophies and play at a level that might not otherwise have been offered again.

“Once I heard of Barça’s interest, I couldn’t sleep until when the signing was made official,” he admitted soon after the deal was confirmed. “I was on holiday but I called my agent every day to ask if the deal was closed. I couldn’t get Barça out of my head.

“Having grown accustomed to suffering against players like Messi, Suárez, Neymar, Iniesta, now I have the honour of playing alongside them. Messi is the best in the world and Iniesta is my idol. Luis Enrique called me yesterday to welcome me. It was a great gesture, I’m very happy.”

Turan has had to swallow his pride to an extent to get this move – more of a supporting player in the Barca cast than he was at the Vicente Calderon, along with the six-month exile he was signed with an express clause indicating he could be sold back to Atletico Madrid (for near enough the same price) if it turned out the winner of the club’s ensuing presidential election did not actually want him.

Few marquee signings have ever been brought in with such an odd stipulation, which could theoretically have limited Turan's Barca career to a matter of days.

“I respect all the candidates,” Turan shrugged, although he need not have worried as incumbent Josep Bartomeu won the election. “All I’m thinking about is that Barça are my dream and, if they want me and I want them, there’s nothing to talk about.”

Just six games into his playing career at the Nou Camp, it is perhaps a bit too soon to say exactly what he will bring to Luis Enrique’s side. But his absence over the first half of the season underlined the fact that his primary value is in his versatility – in Barca’s preferred 4-3-3 system he might not actually be first-choice in any position, but he is a more than adequate replacement in all five of the most advanced attacking roles.

As adept at covering, say, Neymar out on the left wing as Ivan Rakitic in a more central midfield role, Turan gives Barcelona an option that they sorely needed at times during the first half of the season, when injuries to the likes of Rafinha (after the sale of Pedro) left them improvising in some lineups (Aleix Vidal, the club’s other major summer signing, offers a similar value in the wider, defensive roles).

With the Neymar-Suarez-Messi trident untouchable, however, Turan’s most frequent role is going to come in midfield – where Barcelona will undoubtedly and unashamedly tap into the work ethic that was grooved into him under Diego Simeone.

Turan will run and run and run for his team when they don’t have the ball, and then compliment the team with his deft touches of the ball and eye for the right pass as Enrique continues to foster a more rapid-fire counter-attacking edge to his side.

On his league debut alone, against Granada at the start of the month, Turan ran 9.2km in just 72 minutes on the pitch, providing his first assist in the Blaugrana colours after barely eight minutes.

That balance of attributes is particularly valuable if Turan plays on the right-side of central midfield, in near proximity to Dani Alves and Lionel Messi. The former is not a brilliant defender and the latter loves to cut inside, narrowing his side’s attack even as he makes it many magnitudes better. Turan naturally plugs both those gaps – he loves to drift wide to restore width down that right flank, while his defensive diligence offers cover to the more free-spirited style Alves likes to employ.

As the weeks pass and Turan gets more game-time, his value to Barcelona as another element in a more-rounded squad dynamic will surely only become clearer.

"I feel like another piece, I'm another guy in this team,” he said this week. “I feel well, physically and mentally, available to give everything I can for Barcelona to fulfill their objectives."

It is perhaps a simplification to suggest that where Barcelona are a team built from the front backwards, with everything revolving around Messi and his fellow attackers, Atletico are one built from the defence forwards – with Diego Godin, arguably the best centre-back in the world, the cornerstone of a belligerent defence that has conceded just eight goals in 21 games so far this term. But it is probably true that the two clubs prioritise different elements.

Simeone evidently puts great store in his side’s defensive organization, something that begins with Godin and the prodigiously talented Jose Maria Gimenez but continues into the all-action, positionally precise and exceedingly well-drilled midfield. But he is not a man to stifle creative intent, with Antoine Griezmann among the most incisive players in European football this season and a supporting cast of emerging attacking stars.

It is perhaps ironic that the £24m Atletico received for Turan looks like it might have been wasted on Jackson Martinez (£24.5m), a striker who has struggled to adjust to the particular demands of the Spanish club. But the aforementioned Griezmann has flourished after a promising debut campaign last term, while Stefan Savic, Luciano Vietto, Yannick Ferreira Carrasco and the brilliantly named Thomas Partey have all come in and more than covered the additional summer losses of first-team regulars Mario Mandzukic, Raul Garcia, Mario Suarez and Miranda.

“They have changed a lot of players,” Turan said. "But they have the same system of play and the same idea, it's a team that deserves all the respect in the world."

Atletico’s transfer policy also deserves praise, though. If Barca stole one of their best players this summer, then they turned to the rest of La Liga to find those who could enhance their squad – paying big fees for Griezmann (to Real Sociedad) previously, and Vietto (Villarreal) this time around. You wonder if Barca and Real will soon start monitoring both those players (at vastly inflated fees), while European clubs in that second tier alongside Atletico will perhaps be discussing why they did not sign the likes of Carrasco and Matias Kranevitter when they had the chance.

It is a measure of Atletico’s cohesive transfer strategy that the general perception is that the two-window transfer ban they are set to receive from FIFA will not necessarily derail them unduly. They have a well-rounded, young squad already at their disposal – while a number of young players (Borja Baston, Javi Manquillo, Bernard Mensah) are out on loan and could yet supplement the squad, if required.

Just as he helped Turan become an all-round midfielder, Simeone has brought at new levels in the likes of Griezmann, Carrasco and Angel Correa. If anything, Atletico are a more multi-dimensional attacking side now, with the same defensive solidity.

“With one week to go until the halfway point of the season we won't lose sight of our first and main objective, which is to always fight to play better, to be more incisive, to choose better ways to finish moves, to score more goals," Simeone said at the start of January.

"We're in a positive situation. I appreciate that I don't have to play anyone every week and I decide according to how the players get on in training and especially matches. If they make good decisions then they will play more minutes. But the squad has been competitive since the pre-season and the best way for us to improve is by competing."

Barcelona have won the last three meetings between the two, although in the meeting before that Atletico famously held their illustrious opponents to a 1-1 draw at the Camp Nou in a result that set them up to win a famous Liga title a week later.

That same season, Simeone also masterminded a 2-1 aggregate victory over Messi and co. in the Champions League, thanks to a hard-fought 1-0 win at the Vicente Calderon in the second leg.

That was in the midst of a brief period where Atletico were able to go toe-to-toe with Barcelona in head-to-head meetings, but after losing 2-1 at the Vicente Calderon to Luis Enrique’s side at the start of the season, they are still to show they have quite regained that level (which is not a criticism, considering few other teams have been so effective against Barca in recent times). In the league at least, it actually remains 11 matches since Atletico actually won against the Catalan giants.

Set-pieces could end up being vital on Saturday, considering Atletico’s focus on such opportunities in an attacking sense and their willingness, when defending, to concede fouls on the edge of the box rather than allow opponents nearer to goal. That provided vital last time the two sides met: Neymar scoring from a free-kick on the way to Barcelona’s 2-1 win.

The space behind the full-backs, for whom both teams grant a surprising amount of attacking freedom, will both also be potential weaknesses the two managers will be looking to exploit. Of course, as good as Griezmann is becoming, it remains the case that he is no Messi - and perhaps that electric Barcelona trident will be the difference-makers once more.

Turan did not feature in this season's first meeting between the two sides, of course, and it remains to be seen if Luis Enrique uses him against his former side this time out. If he does, Atletico will know what they are facing – and, in some ways, it will be the ultimate compliment of their approach, and Barcelona’s desire to incorporate an element of it.

It speaks well of Simeone and Atletico, though, that they too seem to have reacted to the Turan transfer by evolving and improving.