Brand new day for Atlético as Julián Alvarez tees up derby with dramatic rescue | Sid Lowe

“Football is fantastic,” Diego Simeone said, which he could say by then. All night he had watched Marcos Llorente fly up the wing; for the last half an hour he had watched his son do so too, all clenched jaw and bulging veins, stuck on fast forward, a determination so intense it looked like he might explode. Now it was the Atlético Madrid manager’s turn, who had literally been on his knees for much of the night, sprinting up the touchline in his black suit and shiny shoes, screaming and let loose again. Simeone had been here before, a week earlier, when he had admitted that Atlético’s victory had brought relief not joy. This was even wilder: five goals, four of them belters, and 54,098 people losing their heads.

Simeone especially. Six weeks into the season and for the sixth time, Atlético had scored first; for the fifth time, though, they weren’t going to win. Worse, this time the team that had drawn to Elche, Alavés and Mallorca and been beaten by Espanyol, were going to lose, and just in time for the derby to decide their fate, Real Madrid turning up in two days to do what they do: twist the knife, an entire season over before Atlético had even reached October. Madrid, with six wins from six already, could leave Atlético 15 points behind their rivals. Which was when it happened. “This sport is wonderful,” Simeone said after. “It is all gone, and then – well, sometimes – it gives you that happiness back. As always in football, in life, faith is the most important thing.” A superhero doesn’t go amiss either, the striker they call ‘the Spider’ standing amid the mayhem doing Peter Parker pe-choo, pe-choos from his wrists.

Four days earlier, Julián Alvarez had missed his first penalty for Atlético, finishing a fifth consecutive game without a goal, sitting on the bench muttering “why always me?” – at least that’s what the lip readers said – as Atlético were held at Mallorca. All that enthusiasm, all that investment – €175m this summer, €380m over the last two years – and they had slipped to 14th and nine points behind Madrid; now, a little after 11pm on Wednesday night, with Real having defeated Levante 4-1 at the Ciutat de Valencia 24 hours earlier, it was 12. Alvarez saved them, scoring the opener, the equaliser, and a last-minute winner in the other derby as Atlético beat Rayo Vallecano 3-2, heading up the tunnel with the match ball under his arm.

Diego Simeone can barely watch during Atlético’s win over Rayo. Photograph: Diego Souto/Getty Images

His lovely volley against Rayo had given Atlético another early lead – they scored after eight minutes against Elche, seven against Alavés, nine against Villarreal, and 15 this time – but just before half-time, it started to happen again. The team that averages 10 shots to score and just two to concede, conceded again. From 35 metres, Pep Chavarría hit a ridiculous shot, ripping through the air and past Jan Oblak into the net, rising all the way until it went in off the corner of post and bar. Then on 77 minutes, Álvaro García dashed through, went round the keeper and put Rayo into a 2-1 lead. Atlético had been behind six minutes all season; now here they were again.

Make that seven. It took longer to do the VAR check than it did for them to get level, Alvarez turning in a rebound 36 seconds after the restart. During the wait Simeone had sent on two full-backs which no one understood but him, yet it worked, correcting his earlier adjustments. And, on 89 minutes, with the Metropolitano roaring, Alvarez cut inside and curled into the corner, opening up his body as if to go to the far post but turning his ankle to bend it into the near post instead, everyone racing to the corner with their coach running in the same direction. “We had to win, come what may,” Llorente said.

“When it’s so close,” it hurts more, Rayo coach Iñigo Pérez said. Asked about his absurd goal, Chavarría said he didn’t care. One day he will, maybe, but not now, turning and heading silently up the tunnel. Behind him, Simeone was celebrating with his players, hopping about to a chant of “whoever doesn’t bounce is a Madridista!”. At the final whistle, he had crashed into assistant manager Nelson Vivas, high-fived Nahuel Molina, who happened to be there, and hugged Antoine Griezmann. Then he went off in search of Alvarez, squeezing him hard.

He had needed to. Despite the hat-trick, Alvarez might not even have been the best player on the pitch – Llorente’s performance was ridiculous – but it had been all about the Argentinian. And he is, Simeone said, their best player. As Rayo’s García put it: “He’s one of the best in the world. It’s a bit of a pity he’s not on our team, but they have a higher salary limit, more money, more everything. We could do with a player like that.”

Julián Alvarez scores the winner against Rayo. Photograph: Javier Soriano/AFP/Getty Images

Atlético could too; they could do with having Alvarez back. He had cut an oddly forlorn figure of late too, hard to avoid the feeling that this might not feel like his kind of place too much longer, another player worn down by it all. Alvarez had missed a sitter against Espanyol – hitting the post at the end of a glorious move with the score at 1-0 on the opening weekend with Atlético going on to lose 2-1 – and not scored since. He said he wasn’t grumbling about Simeone on the Mallorca bench, insisting he had been mis(lip)read, “but then you know how social media is”; but he was, he said, grumbling about himself, “using bad words I can’t say again”, and it wasn’t the first time he had been invited to sit down early, a sense of things unravelling.

Asked how Alvarez could score a goal like the winner against Rayo, Simeone’s explanation was simple: “Because he’s very good.” When it was suggested that it had been Messi-like, he replied: “Well, he’s Julián Alvarez.” There was more, he knew; this was about the person as well as the player. “He is the best player we have got,” the coach said. “We have to help him, look after him, take care, so that he is here for many years.” His first hat-trick could not have come at a better time; the winner could not have done so either. For him, and for all of them, seeking something cathartic in the chaos. “Tomorrow at 8am, we’ll be back to prepare for Madrid,” the coach said.

“It was an incredible match, amazing,” David Hancko told ESPN. “In the end, I’m so happy to have won. We conceded an incredible goal. We made more chances and then we conceded again and I thought: ‘what’s happening?!’ For your mind it’s not easy when you are playing well but not winning games. You know that feeling when you wake up and you think ‘oh, we drew, we’re not in a good spell’. These next two days before the derby will be much easier now. What has been happening to us this season is is impossible but we fought to the end. At 2-2, I thought: we’re going to win this, and then Julián showed his incredible quality. We spoke with the boys and said maybe this is better than a 4-0.”

“Pure football,” Simeone said, once he’d recovered from the last lung-busting sprint of another night lived on the edge.