Official: Atlético Sign Alderweireld and Guilavogui

On the final day of the 2013 summer transfer window, Atlético Madrid announced the signings of Toby Alderweireld and Josuha Guilavogui. The Belgian defender had arrived in Madrid on the Sunday for his medical, with the French midfielder going through the same procedures a day later; the club held both announcements until the Monday and set the presentations for after the international break.

Alderweireld came in as a centre back who could also fill in at right back. The 24-year-old had played 186 games for Ajax before the move, scoring 15 goals and winning three Eredivisie titles. His defensive work had gone largely untested in the Dutch league, but he had shown himself to be an accomplished passer and a threat from set pieces and from distance. At Atlético he signed a four-year contract and joined a competition for places alongside Miranda and Diego Godín.

The transfer carried an unusual footnote. Manchester City were reported to have been involved in the deal, with talk that the English club had financed the move and then exchanged centre backs with Atlético so that Martín Demichelis could be reunited with Manuel Pellegrini.

Guilavogui was the less familiar of the two, though he was part of the France setup and had impressed Didier Deschamps. The midfielder, whose first name is spelled Josuha, not Joshua, had made his reputation in Ligue 1 as a box-to-box player, scoring 9 goals in 93 appearances for Saint-Étienne. He joined for five seasons in a deal reported at €10 million.

The two arrivals landed in a squad that had just lost Radamel Falcao to Monaco and was about to produce the most successful season in the club’s modern history. Neither man became a fixture of it: Alderweireld played a supporting role before leaving for Southampton and then Tottenham, while Guilavogui spent the campaign on the fringes and moved on to Wolfsburg, where he stayed for the best part of a decade.

Diego Simeone’s rebuilding work across those windows is set out in the tactics section, the squads of the period in the club history pages, and further reports from the same seasons in the archive.