La Liga: Atletico Madrid loses 0-1 to Bilbao and falls nine points behind Barcelona

Alex Berenguer’s superb strike from outside the penalty area earned Athletic Bilbao a late 1-0 victory over Atletico Madrid in La Liga on Saturday.

Diego Simeone’s Atletico, fourth, suffered a second straight defeat, leaving them nine points behind leaders Barcelona, ​​who earlier defeated Real Betis 5-3.

Atletico had gone unbeaten in thirteen games before beating Barca in midweek, followed by the Basques at their bustling San Mames Stadium.

Ernesto Valverde’s Bilbao, seventh, were also beaten by Real Madrid on Wednesday, but put in a much better performance to beat the visiting team.

Bilbao have had a poor start to the season, both domestically and in the Champions League. However, it overshadowed Atletico in a hard-fought match before Berenguer scored his first goal of the season in the 85th minute to give his team three points.

«We are really annoyed… on a counter-attack they put one past us,» said Atletico midfielder Pablo Barrios.

“There are still a lot of points at stake, at the start of the season we were far behind (but fought back).”

Simeone’s squad did not include injured stars Alexa Baena, Jose Gimenez and Marcos Llorente, but placed Robin Le Normand on the bench after an injury.

Bilbao were dealt a blow in the latter stages of an evenly matched first half when centre-back Aymeric Laporte went off injured and was replaced by Dani Vivian.

Atletico started the second half stronger, but the hosts started to take control.

Bilbao’s Oihan Sancet selfishly fired over in the second half when he had teammate Unai Gomez free and asked for the ball in a perfect position to score.

Atletico substitute Alexander Sorloth might have given his side the lead, but his header was saved by Unai Simon.

Shortly afterwards, Nico Williams cut the ball back to Berenguer on the edge of the penalty area, and he planted a spinning effort beyond the reach of Atletico stopper Jan Oblak.

Published on December 7, 2025