Diego Simeone stopped his news conference before Atletico Madrid’s quarter-final against Barcelona to salute Antoine Griezmann, a rare public farewell to the club’s all-time leading scorer as the 35-year-old prepares for his final matches in Madrid. Griezmann is set to leave Atletico at the end of the season and join Orlando City, closing the latest chapter of a career that began in Spain in 2009.
Simeone told the room he wanted to thank Griezmann for his hard work and humility, adding that he is an admirable person and a role model for young people, and thanking him for everything he has given the club and still will. That tribute carried extra weight because Griezmann asked to remain in Madrid until the end of the season, giving Atletico one last run with the forward who has made 494 appearances and scored 212 goals for the club.
Griezmann’s exit also comes as Atletico prepare to face Arsenal in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final, a twist that gives fresh edge to a story with old roots. The French World Cup winner has spent his entire club career in Spain, moving from Real Sociedad to Atletico in 2014 for a fee believed to be worth 30m euros, then leaving for Barcelona in 2019 before returning on loan in 2021 and making the move permanent a year later.
His bond with Arsenal stretches back years. Griezmann wrote in his 2013 autobiography that he came close to joining the London club and playing under Arsene Wenger, saying he waited and kept waiting before being told only hours before the window closed that Arsenal would not move. He later said that when his former agent told him the club were interested again, he told him to forget it after the blow they had given him.
That missed move never defined his career, but it did become part of the story around one of Atletico’s defining figures. Griezmann is regarded as the club’s greatest player, and his legacy has been framed as reaching beyond trophies, built on consistency, goals and a standard that Simeone felt compelled to spell out in public before a major European night. The final scenes of that career will now play out in Madrid before he heads for Orlando and leaves behind a record that will be hard to match.
