Atlético Madrid is not having a good season, to say the least. In the Spanish league, Cholo Simeone’s team is very far from the championship fight as it is placed fourth on the eve of the round of 16, with Barcelona, against whom it will play tonight (Sunday, 22:00 on channel ONE) and Real Madrid, the leaders, are 11 points away from it.
Nevertheless, if in the league Atlético can still somehow save the season if they manage to put together a heroic winning streak, in the Champions League the Colchoneros suffered their biggest European failure under Simeone: for the first time since 2011, Atlético Madrid will not play in the European factories in the winter after finishing fourth when they even Not relegated to the Europa League – when the relegation happened from an apparently comfortable house, which included Club Brugge, Porto and Bayer Leverkusen. In the end, everyone was comfortable at home except for Atlético.
Despite the big mess and the pressures, there is still a bright spot this season in Atlético Madrid, a point worth putting a bright spotlight on: Reinaldo Mandaba, a left back from Mozambique who will celebrate his 29th birthday at the end of the month. In addition to being one of the most stable left-backs in the last three seasons in Europe, Mandaba, an almost anonymous name to quite a few football fans, has an amazing life story that only makes the fact that he has reached where he has almost unimaginable.
Mozambique is a country that does not mean much to most people, certainly not in the context of football, and indeed, the former Portuguese colony that gained its independence in 1975, has not produced too many notable names for the high levels of football and it is doubtful that anyone ever believed that one of the best defenders in La Liga would emerge from it this season . Mandaba, scion of a local football family (his father and grandfather were footballers and coaches) started playing football at the age of 8.
In an interview with the Spanish AS, the left defender said: “I started playing football in the street when I was eight or nine years old. I played in the neighborhood with my friends. One day I said to my father who was a coach, ‘Dad, you have to come see me play, I’m a very good player’, and he replied: ‘No, you’re not a good player, you have no idea’, but he laughed. On the same day he came to see me secretly playing, to check if what I said was true. When I returned home, he told me that if I continue like this, I’m going to be a great player, but when I have to focus only on football and dedicate myself to it.”
Soon after, Mandaba’s father died, and he became the man of the house and helped his mother keep the house, with his father’s words and the dream of becoming a professional footballer sitting in his mind. Reynaldo Mandaba did dedicate himself only to football. In the same interview with AS, he said that he only focused on the sport as per his father’s commandments, and every day after he finished school he would go to the field to practice, when already at the age of 11 he was playing with 17 and 18 year olds to improve.
When he himself reached the age of 18, and when he had only been a professional for six months – Mandaba was already called up to the senior Mozambique team for the first time in 2014, and he says that being in the national team alongside players who play in Europe at higher levels, only increased his hunger to improve and become the best player he can be. However, Mandaba refused to leave Mozambique to stay with his mother and family and he turned down offers from outside the country that could have promoted him professionally. On November 12, 2015 another tragedy struck Mandaba when he also lost his mother to a heart attack, and he says that during this painful period he began to think about himself and his career.
At the age of 22 and after the death of his mother, Mandaba arrived at a local club called Liga Desportiva de Maputo, a team from the capital city of Mozambique, Beira, but only 15 days after he signed, he was called to a meeting at the club’s offices and told: ‘Come, Benfica wants to sign you for five years.’ Young Mandaba of course jumped at the dream chance that seems to have been taken from a kitschy Hollywood movie, and he didn’t even get to play at the new club from Beira.
However, the time at Benfica did not brighten Mandaba’s face. He did get physically stronger and trained at the highest levels, but he did not get a chance in the club’s senior team, and in his first season he played only twice in the reserve team. After that, Mandaba was also injured and was absent for about six months, and despite the dream of playing for the Portuguese luxury club, he decided to roll down the ranks of Portuguese football – the main thing is to accumulate playing minutes. “Everyone in Mozambique says that Mandaba is in Benfica, but the truth is that I don’t play,” he told the president of Benfica and asked to go find himself in the country’s second division.
In 2017 and 2018, he was loaned to teams such as Papa from the third division and Covilha from the minor league, and in the summer of 2018 he was released from Benfica to Blanesches, a slightly better-known club, thus at the age of 24 and a half he reached the top league in Portugal for the first time in his career – and there he began to flourish. After a good season in Blanesches, Mandaba caught the eye of Lille’s scouts, who paid three million euros for him in the summer of 2019, an amount that sounds funny today, but it is not a small amount of money for a player who, at the age of 25, made only 18 appearances in the Portuguese first league.
And in the night Mandava fulfilled himself. He reached heights that he doubtless dreamed of at that time, when he started playing at the age of 8 in a neighborhood in Mozambique and dreamed that his father would only see him play with his friends. Mandaba was an integral part of Lille’s sensational championship run in the 2020/21 season, he played with them the following season in the Champions League, just four years after being loaned to a mid-table team in the Portuguese second division, Mandaba even won the French Supercup with them held at the Bloomfield Stadium in August 2021 where he completed 90 minutes In the victory over Paris Saint-Germain, when the personal highlight for him was the selection at the end of the 2020/21 season for the outstanding left back in the French league.
Reinaldo Mandaba, a boy from Mozambique who just wanted to play football, was ahead of big names like Mitchell Bakker and the talented Caio Henrique from Paris and Monaco and the experienced Mathieu de Chilio and Yuto Nagatomo from Lyon and Marseille. Mandaba attributes his success at Lille to Christophe Galtier, PSG’s current coach. The left back says he learned a lot from Galtier who instilled confidence in him, telling him to be confident in his abilities and to know when he should take risks and when to play simply. Mandaba says he’s always seen Galtier as a super coach, and he’s not surprised he’s where he is today. Who knows, maybe the two will meet next season in the Champions League.
Mandaba’s meteoric breakthrough did not go unnoticed by Diego Simeone, one who knows how to spot a tough and good defender from a distance, and in January 2022, Atlético Madrid put their hands on the block from Mozambique when they paid Lille 3 million euros for his services. Despite the sharp transition, Reynaldo’s impact was immediate: in his first 19 games for the club, Atletico Madrid conceded just 14 goals, compared to 40 goals in 32 games before he arrived. This season the flattering average of absorption has obviously decreased, but despite the retreat in the ability of the colchoneros, Mandaba continues to display a high defensive ability, with the numbers also showing it.
Mandaba is second in the entire Spanish league in steals and successful tackles with 65 of them. In addition, Mandaba leads the Spanish league in rescues in the defensive third with 32 of these (5 more than the next one after him, Javi Galan of Salta Vigo), he won 32 of 45 tackles he entered and he is in first place in Atlético Madrid in steals in the central third with 13 of these, quite a lot In a season where the team shows an uncharacteristic softness in its defensive game. The aforementioned statistic is very flattering for Mandaba, but at the same time shows how soft the link of Atlético Madrid is this season.
Tonight Atlético Madrid will meet Barcelona, whom they beat only five times in 32 games in the Simeone era, with only two of the victories (0:1 in the 2020/21 championship season and 0:2 last season) coming in La Liga. Despite the tough balance, a victory in front of the home crowd for the leader of the table can change for the better the less good season of the Colchaneros, and for that they will need Reinaldo at his peak. and he? Nothing has long been too big for him.