Atlético Madrid still ‘dreaming’ of Marcos Alonso — report

Until reversing this season, Marcos Alonso’s involvement at Chelsea had been steadily decreasing since the heights of 2016-18, leading to multiple rounds of exit rumors, often featuring Atlético Madrid (and sometimes Inter Milan).

Obviously, none of those have come to pass, but Atlético are back once again as per Marca. Apparently, Diego Simeone still dreams of the now 31-year-old wing-back, having failed to find a successor to Filipe Luís, who left Atléti in 2019 after nearly a decade at the club (interrupted by the one solitary, title-winning season at Chelsea in 2014-15).

Marca’s report claims that Alonso would be open to the move as he’d still like to play in La Liga, which he’d done exactly just the one time, his lone appearance for Real Madrid way back in 2009-10.

Chelsea’s left back situation has been a point of concern for some time, and while Ben Chilwell looked to have solved that with spectacular results, his ACL injury has posed a lot of questions for this season — as yet unanswered by the club — and going forward as well depending on how well and how quickly he can recover. The assumption that he’ll be back to his best and ready to play by August may be rather optimistic.

Alonso will have one more year left on his contract after this season, and as things stand, he remains the only viable (if not nearly comparable) deputy to Chilwell. He’s unlikely to command a high fee in the market, and would certainly remain at least a fallback option should we again fail to address the situation through the market, the Loan Army, or the Academy. Simeone dreams may have to wait a bit longer.