Atlético Madrid lost in the dying minutes of the match against Villarreal on Sunday night. Forward Enes Ünal came on as a substitute for the Yellow Submarine and scored a brace inside the final 10 minutes, grabbing the winner in the second minute of stoppage time. Atlético enter the international break on a sour note after finding such great form of late and have seen their lead for second place trimmed to just four points.

After the match, Diego Simeone, Saúl Ñíguez and Thomas Partey spoke about the loss.

Diego Simeone

On the match and the title race:

“It was an important match with two teams that play a similar style of football. We controlled the first half and they began to grow in the second 45 minutes until they scored their two goals.

“We have to keep working to get the maximum amount of points in the league.”

On taking responsibility for the defeat:

“I lost the game, the players made a great effort and I didn’t help them with my decisions. I may have been mistaken [with my substitutions].”

On the international break coming up:

“Now, the lads are going to play with their national teams. It’s an important moment for them to be able to prepare for the World Cup. We’ll wait until they come back to begin preparing our upcoming match in the best way possible.”

Saúl

On the match and the road ahead:

“We lost the match in the most painful way possible.

“The match was under our control. In the second half they controlled possession but didn’t create many chances. [But] they concentrated and scored from two set piece plays.

“We’re going to improve upon what we did wrong.”

On Simeone taking responsibility for the defeat:

“Simeone did not lose anything. Here we are all the same, in good times and bad, especially in the bad.”

Thomas

On moving on from another last-minute loss:

“We’re not happy with what happened, but football is like that. We must forget about the match and keep working.

“We could have scored a second goal and killed the game. But we didn’t.”