{"id":614123,"date":"2022-06-23T04:41:10","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T08:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=614123"},"modified":"2022-06-23T04:41:10","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T08:41:10","slug":"axel-witsel-atletico-madrid-transfer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/06\/23\/axel-witsel-atletico-madrid-transfer\/","title":{"rendered":"Atletico Madrid Complete Signing of Perfect Hector Herrera Replacement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/06\/06\/manchester-city-women-free-agents\/\" target=\"_self\">Atletico Madrid<\/a> have completed the signing of Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel on a free transfer, confirms <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FabrizioRomano\/status\/1539876912771629056?s=20&amp;t=qhmCcc7Ep4MyJlf8JGfkUw&amp;fbclid=IwAR3hAT_0PrdnNqCXbGKgYBFLuRrF4Bwk0Nct3QcN0qVV2U48LgnJOIMUbyI\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fabrizio Romano<\/a>. Diego Simeone&#8217;s side are eager to strengthen their midfield line and have identified the experienced 33-year-old as a good fit for the squad.<\/p>\n<h2>Atletico Madrid Sign Axel Witsel<\/h2>\n<h3>Axel Witsel Roped in as Hector Herrera\u2019s Replacement<\/h3>\n<p>Atletico Madrid are seeking replacements for midfielder Hector Herrera, who joined MLS side Houston Dynamo towards the end of last season. The La Liga giants have a full agreement in place with Witsel to join them before the start of pre-season training.<\/p>\n<p>The Belgian midfielder will sign a one-year contract with the club and the paperwork around the deal is already prepared, with only the player&#8217;s signature and medical tests remaining.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Atletico Madrid are now progressing in talks to sign Axel Witsel on a free transfer, as per <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RTBFsport?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@RTBFsport<\/a>. He had talks with Olympique Marseille but it was not fully agreed. \u26aa\ufe0f\ud83d\udd34 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Atleti?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Atleti<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Atletico are waiting for final green light from Witsel on contract details. Work in progress. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/zTbWVkFbkR\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/zTbWVkFbkR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FabrizioRomano\/status\/1538183808314482696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 18, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Diego Simeone believes that Witsel can be an ideal fit for his team, which has earned a bad reputation for their defensive, physical style in recent years. He believes the hard-working midfielder can add more variety to his midfield line and help Atletico strongly challenge for the La Liga title next season.<\/p>\n<h3>Atletico Set to Get a Surge of Experience in 33-Year-Old Midfielder<\/h3>\n<p>Axel Witsel might be nearing the end of his career, but he has been playing at the top level of European football for over a decade now. The most recent club Witsel played for was <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/06\/22\/borussia-dortmund-sebastien-haller-signing\/\" target=\"_self\">Borussia Dortmund<\/a> from 2018 until the end of last season. He made over 100 appearances for them and regularly featured in the Champions League.<\/p>\n<p>The 33-year-old has over 100 international caps for Belgium and is brimming with experience and knowledge. His playing style is also one that would compliment Atletico&#8217;s, as Witsel&#8217;s an energetic figure who loves to run around midfield harassing oppositions with crunching tackles and recover the ball for his team.<\/p>\n<p>He can also move the ball forward efficiently and is quite prolific in set-piece scenarios as well. Despite this, Witsel is unlikely to be used as a first-team regular because of the presence of Koke, Rodrigo De Paul and Marcos Llorente or <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/06\/08\/spanish-midfielder-leaving-chelsea\/\" target=\"_self\">even the returning Saul Niguez<\/a> at Atletico.<\/p>\n<p>However, he can still make a solid impact whenever called upon and be a smart option to bring on from the bench to defuse the pressure during games and help seal wins for Simeone&#8217;s side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Atletico Madrid have completed the signing of Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel on a free transfer, confirms Fabrizio Romano. Diego Simeone&#8217;s side are eager to strengthen their midfield line and have identified the experienced 33-year-old as a good fit for the squad. Atletico Madrid Sign Axel Witsel Axel Witsel Roped in as Hector Herrera\u2019s Replacement Atletico [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4218,"featured_media":614127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8383,4,28],"tags":[2573],"class_list":["post-614123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-liga","category-borussia-dortmund","category-bundesliga","category-transfers","tag-axel-witsel"],"modified_by":"Joseph Howes, Site Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}