Ángel Correa’s friends like to say that his name is the only saintly thing about him but the man with the scarred heart has a habit of appearing in moments of need, and so it was.

Saturday night at the Cathedral, the storm had passed, the sky had opened and suddenly there he was before them, 48,617 people witnessing him fly through the middle, past Julen Agirrezabala, and roll into an empty net to deliver Athletic Club’s first defeat at San Mames in more than a year. The clock read 91:54. Correa had been on the pitch for only four minutes and he didn’t think he would be there at all, but it was done. Call it a miracle if you like, or something else.

It was 0-0 and time was running out between Athletic and Atlético Madrid. Diego Simeone had introduced Rodrigo De Paul, Rodrigo Riquelme and Alex Sørloth. His son Giuliano had gone on too, the ballboy who leapt into his arms celebrating a derby goal nine years ago, got a solitary minute in 2022 and scored against them last season finally getting his debut as a full member of the first team.

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Correa, meanwhile, had been left behind and didn’t imagine joining them now. There had been one shot on target: Athletic had that and if there was a second it felt like Athletic would have that too, the visitors’ plan more likely to be protection. “I knew there was a change left but I thought Cholo was thinking of something else,” he admitted. “In the end though, he did call me.” By then, there were 103 seconds remaining, hardly worth it. Yet Correa said: “I went with faith that something can always happen.”

What happened was this: Athletic forced another corner in the 92nd minute, San Mames roaring for a winner. Semi-cleared, Nico Williams picked it up, turned and played a long ball towards his defence. Near the halfway line, the full-back Iñigo Lekue paused, doubted and, realising too late what he had done, was caught. Sørloth took it off him and Correa appeared. Played in, all alone, with his third touch of the game he took it past Agirrezabala and with his fourth he scored, something almost inevitable about it all, as if it was fate. “Yet again, Ángel did his thing,” Simeone said.

“It hurts even more like this,” Agirrezabala admitted; for Atlético, it might even have felt better this way. The footage of the Athletic bench as it unfolds says it all: Iñaki Williams’s “oh”, the look on his face. When the camera pans to the other bench, it does too, everyone unloading on to the touchline, drawn into the run until they are released, sprinting towards the scorer. Simeone went after them, captain Koke pulling him along, until the coach remembered his operated knee, braked and went back, chest-bumping Nelson Vivas instead. Koke reached Correa and kissed him.

At the final whistle, the ball at Correa’s feet for only the fourth time, Simeone set off down the tunnel shouting and swearing, liberated. Following him in, staff celebrated: Cholismo’s back. The players went to applaud their fans high in the corner. They had needed this. It was, AS had said that morning, “a final in August.” Which was pushing it, and the final thing is an epidemic, every half-important match classified that way now, but two draws – at Villarreal and at home against Espanyol – did mean that Atlético kicked off seven points behind Barcelona, who had just taken Valladolid apart, and were obliged to win. Nor would it be easy: they had won only one of seven visits to San Mames.

If they could admit to being a little fortunate, Simeone’s satisfaction at the result was understandable. He was also happy with how they had done it. With the arrival of €200m (£168m) of players, Julián Álvarez especially, the expectation might have been for something else but Atlético had defended well against a genuinely good side, something of their old values for him to hold on to and it wasn’t a one-off: when a post-game question opened with “you’ve kept two clean sheets in a row,” he immediately shot back “three.” He also claimed that he had anticipated the game opening late on, quick to note that they finished with three forwards on the pitch. And the quality of the subs said something about their strength in depth.

Above all, though, there was Ángel, the last of those. Within the Atlético dressing room you won’t find a footballer of whom they’re fonder. The play on his name is too easy, too irresistible, but there is some truth in it, some sense that when all else is lost, you can count on him, as if guided by some light. If nothing else, he is different: an anarchic, unpredictable footballer, capable of the brilliant and baffling in the same game, even the same move; a man who, however few his minutes, is always there for you, appearing somehow, finding a way.

Raised in Las Flores, Rosario, a neighbourhood where, he has said: “I lost many friends to bullets, because they were in places they shouldn’t have been,” where “everyone tells you you’ll end up a drug addict or in jail”, Correa was one of 10 siblings in an improvised brick house with a corrugated tin roof. There, he played nighttime games with money riding on them, people betting on the winners: they knew he was different, that he had talent, but that alone would not be enough. He lost his father at 10 and a brother soon after. By then, he was supporting the family, his earnings buying what little food they had, only later working out why his mum always said she wasn’t hungry.

Around the time Atlético Madrid were about to sign him from San Lorenzo in 2014, a tumour was discovered on his heart. Atlético set up an operation in New York, and Correa travelled with the club doctor, José Villalón, to Mount Sinai Medical School. Few surgeons had been confident when his case was discussed at a medical conference in Madrid but there they took the tumour out through an artery and his sternum rather than risk damaging the wall of the heart, which would have ended his career. Left with a scar down his chest, he was 18. Every day during his rehabilitation, he walked Manhattan. The following summer, he signed for Atlético.

La Liga results

Alavés 2 Las Palmas 0; Ath Bilbao 0 Atl Madrid 1; Barcelona 7 Valladolid 0; Espanyol 2 Rayo Vallecano 1; Getafe 0 Sociedad 0; Leganés 0 Mallorca 1; Osasuna 3 Celta Vigo 2; Real Madrid 2 Real Betis 0; Sevilla 0 Girona 2; Valencia 1 Villarreal 1

Ten years on, he is still there. He has played 425 games for the club; only seven men have ever played more and that will be six next month. He has not played as many as he would have liked, although not as few as is sometimes assumed. When he has, it hasn’t always been in his position, not least because it’s not easy to define what his position actually is. In the area, in tight spaces, no one turns like him, no one improvises like him, but he’s not exactly a striker. His numbers were always good-ish, but not quite good enough: eight, eight, nine, five, seven over the past five seasons; 13 in his best. He has played off the front, and to the right. Most of all, he has played as a sub. Last year he started 14 league games, the year before 11, and the year before that 21. In 2020-21 he started 29, his highest total.

He has often seemed on the edge of it all, about to depart. Nearly but not quite. In 2018, a move to Milan seemed done but didn’t happen. In late 2023, Saudi Arabia called, Atlético accepting his departure but that didn’t either, as if somehow, no one could quite do it. Like the connection was just too strong. It had been a decade after all. When his mother Marcela – “my strength” – died after three years with cancer, he said the club had been his family, Simeone, his staff and players supporting him. Atlético had pulled him from poverty, he always said. They had taken him to New York when he wasn’t even their player yet.

As for him, he had given everything he had, always. Sensitive, shy at times, he had needed care, affection. Sometimes it seemed he deserved more; as a person, inside the club they certainly felt so, a pang of guilt at him not getting more games. But he never complained, never disengaged, never confronted anyone. He suffered, hurt, when opportunities were few but did so in silence, ever ready. And when they needed him he was there, as if touched by something not easy to explain, yet right somehow. And when he was, they were all the happier for it, for him.

When Atlético won the league in 2021, Correa scored five in the last eight games: on the final day, he hauled them back into it with a brilliant, improvised toe-punt from the edge of the area. As he waited to enter the field on Saturday, the former Atlético full-back Juanfran said: “Correa always gives you something.” At the end he insisted: “With Correa, it’s not about the quantity of the minutes; it’s about the quality.” He has scored in 56 league games, Atlético have lost none of them. Of those, this was their 47th win.

“Yet again, he had one of his moments and made us very happy,” Simeone said. “I’m so pleased for him because he’s one of those people that deserves more minutes. Sometimes I can give them to him and sometimes I can’t.” This time he could: not much but enough, Atlético’s Angel appearing before them all in Bilbao.