Explained: Alvaro Morata’s celebration against former club Real Madrid

Ever since Luis Enrique took over the Spanish national team, Alvaro Morata has increasingly had a little more edge to him. Luis Enrique backed Morata to the hilt, giving him more confidence and bite, which was on show on Thursday night against Real Madrid.

It was Morata who was on the end of a beautiful Atletico Madrid opener after just 19 minutes. When he wheeled away to celebrate, covered the ‘M’ on the back of his shirt, but according to Sport, he intended on blanking out the ‘o’ too.

During the warm-up, Real Madrid fans had chanted ‘rata’ [rat] at Morata, feeling he betrayed the club by moving to Atletico Madrid. The celebration was an ironic nod to that.

Morata has links to several Madrid teams. Growing up, he attended several Atletico Madrid-run summer camps, before ending up at Getafe. Real Madrid then picked him up, at the age of 16. Morata then worked his way into the first team, but was sold to Juventus in 2014.