According to reports, only Radamel Falcao, Diego Costa, Antoine Griezmann, and Luis Suarez have achieved this feat with Atletico Madrid.

Simeone recently said after Julian Alvarez’s brace against Valladolid: “He’s having a fantastic season. We were looking for a player like him. Against Sevilla and today, he carried the team. We need him. He has 14 goals in La Liga, but we tell him that Lewandowski has scored many more.”

This joke was a mix of praise for the importance of the “Argentine Spider” to Atletico Madrid and Simeone’s usual motivational tactics. But behind these words lies a challenge Alvarez is keenly aware of. Simeone’s reference to Alvarez’s goal tally was no coincidence. He knows Alvarez now has 15 goals after scoring against Rayo Vallecano. A challenge awaits him.

In reality, neither Morata (15 goals) and Griezmann (16 goals) last season, nor Griezmann (15 goals) the season before, nor Correa (12 goals) in 2021-22 managed to reach this number. The last player to successfully meet this challenge was Luis Suarez, who shined with 21 La Liga goals in 2020-21.

The difficulty of this target becomes clear when we see that Suarez has been the exception in the last eight seasons (Griezmann scored 16, 19, and 15 goals between 2016 and 2018, while Morata ended 2020 with 12 goals). However, in Simeone’s first five years, this goal had become routine. At that time, Atletico had fearsome strikers: Falcao with 24 and 28 goals in 2011-12 and 2012-13, Diego Costa with 27 goals in 2013-14, and Griezmann with 22 goals in both 2014-15 and 2015-16.

Now, Alvarez has his eyes set on this list and must score five more goals in the remaining five La Liga matches to reach it.