MADRID: Luis Suarez needed a little more than 10 minutes to make up for his slow start to the season.

Suarez scored two late goals to give La Liga champions Atletico Madrid a 2-1 win at Getafe on Tuesday after the hosts were reduced to 10 men late in the second half.

The victory took Atletico top of the standings on 14 points from six games, a point ahead of Real Madrid who have a game in hand, while Getafe are bottom with no points.

The home side went in front on the stroke of halftime with a header from Stefan Mitrovic after Atletico keeper Jan Oblak had uncharacteristically spilled a cross.

It was the first time Getafe had scored against Atletico in 1,583 minutes of La Liga football, ending Diego Simeone’s remarkable run of never conceding against his side’s neighbours in the league since taking charge of the club in December 2011.

Getafe played the final phase of the match with 10 men after Carles Alena was shown a straight red card in the 74th minute for raking his studs down the back of the leg of Atletico substitute Matheus Cunha.

The sending off galvanised the visitors and it took a superb double save from David Soria to prevent Angel Correa and then Suarez from equalising.

But the 10 men could only hold on for so long and Atletico levelled when Suarez controlled a cross from substitute Mario Hermoso with his right foot before blasting the ball into the net with his left in the 78th minute.

The Uruguayan then snatched the winner in added time, ghosting away from his marker Mitrovic to head home a cross from Sime Vrsaljko to score his second of the game after netting once in his previous six appearances in all competitions.

“Every player at the top level has to learn to live with criticism but what I do is never give in, I’ll never get beat down by criticism,” Suarez told reporters.

“Above all I’m happy because of the circumstances of the game and that we managed to turn the scoreline on its head after. We still need to improve and solve a few things that we are not doing well but things will improve because the season has barely started.”

Elsewhere on Wednesday, Athletic Bilbao lost 2-1 at home to Rayo Vallecano, for whom Colombian veteran Radamel Falcao scored his first goal in memorable style, a winner six minutes into injury time.

And Celta Vigo notched up their first victory of the campaign by beating winless Levante 2-0 thanks to goals from Iago Aspas and Brais Mendez.—Agencies

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2021