Juan Musso’s form gives Atlético a true Jan Oblak successor at last

When Juan Musso arrived at Cerro del Espino in August 2024, the framing around his loan move from Atalanta was almost apologetic. This was a squad player, a number two, someone to fill in while Jan Oblak remained the fixture he had been for the better part of a decade. Atlético exercised their purchase option in June 2025, tying Musso to the club until 2028, but at the time even that felt like sensible housekeeping rather than a statement of intent.

Now though, the picture looks different. Not because Oblak has collapsed, but because Musso has quietly, consistently done enough to make the looming goalkeeping transition feel less like a crisis in waiting and more like a managed handover. That is no small thing at a club where succession planning historically has been an afterthought.

Jan Oblak’s big shoes to fill Understanding what Musso is stepping into requires understanding what Oblak means to this club. The Slovenian joined Atlético in the summer of 2014 and has since played 352 games for them, winning La Liga in 2020/21 and keeping 175 clean sheets. He has won six Zamora trophies, the award for the La Liga goalkeeper with the best goals-to-games ratio in a season.

The most recent came in 2024/25, when he made 36 appearances, kept 15 clean sheets, made 86 saves and conceded less than a goal per game. There was the night at Anfield in March 2020 when nine saves in a Champions League round of 16 second leg helped eliminate Liverpool. There was the aforementioned 2020/21 title season, when Atlético ground out results with a defensive stubbornness that carried Oblak’s fingerprints across every clean sheet.