Blood, sweat, and skill: Saul the epitome of Atletico's makeup

As Saul Niguez lay wincing on the King Power Stadium turf, Leicester’s fans showered him with boos. Without the benefit of a replay, they had not seen Riyad Mahrez's studs rake into the Atletico Madrid midfielder's thigh. They assumed Saul was exaggerating, bluffing, wasting time. How many might have afforded him the benefit of the doubt, if they had heard the interview he gave at the weekend?

"For the last two years, I've been playing with a catheter," Saul told the Spanish TV station Mega. "I urinated blood after every training session and match, it was really uncomfortable. I put my health at risk in order to defend these colours, to fulfill this dream. I was gambling with my health and driven by the desire to play first-team football for Atleti."

Related - Atletico's artistic warrior: How budding star Saul combines fight with flair

It was an astonishing confession, an acknowledgement of vulnerability that few professional athletes would allow. Saul had alluded before to ongoing "consequences" from the kidney injury he suffered during a Champions League tie against Bayer Leverkusen back in 2015, but few could have supposed he meant something as serious as this.

Was it sensible to continue playing under such conditions? That is a question only Saul and the medics who treated him could answer. What we can say is that his team has benefited from the decision. Saul’s hard graft and ball-winning in midfield are appreciated at all times, but he has also quietly become a man for the big occasion.

If Leicester fans were inclined to boo him, then perhaps it was because he had scored the goal which effectively ended their Champions League dream. Trailing 1-0 from the first leg of this quarter-final in Madrid, the Foxes needed to score first to give themselves a chance, but instead fell behind when Saul met Filipe Luis' left-wing delivery with a brilliant header that flew back across Kasper Schmeichel and into the corner of the net.

Related - Watch: Saul's header helps eliminate Leicester

Had you only tuned in for Atletico’s Champions League knockout fixtures over the past two seasons, you might have considered this par for the course. Saul was the man who unpicked Bayern Munich with a stunning solo goal in last year’s semi-finals. The one he scored against Bayer Leverkusen in this season's last-16 tie was almost as impressive.

And yet, he is only Atletico’s tenth-most prolific player in La Liga this season. Centre-back Diego Godin has scored more. If you wanted a more representative indication of Saul’s week-to- week value to Atletico, you might have found it in the way he charged out to block a Danny Drinkwater shot in the 89th minute on Tuesday - still full of furious commitment at a moment when legs were tiring and the game getting stretched.

He is the self-described "warrior," a man who buys completely into Diego Simeone's vision of football matches as battles for survival. "The important thing is to win," Saul told El Mundo in an interview last year. "You can play really well, have a jolly match, lose 1-0 and then you’re left with a stupid look on your face saying, 'what good is that to me?'"

Where other players might talk about shedding blood for the cause, Saul has lived that reality in a most uncomfortable way. And yet, he does it not for some grim sense of duty. To understand that much, you only have to look at his past.

Saul started out as a youth player at Real Madrid, but left after a couple of years due to an apparent bullying campaign against him. He has been reluctant to divulge full details, but told El Mundo that someone passed a letter to his then coach claiming, falsely, that he had written it. He had boots and food stolen, as well as being barred from training for two weeks.

And yet, when the same newspaper asked Saul if he had experienced his departure as a trauma, he was dismissive. "No," he replied, "I’m telling you I just wanted to enjoy playing football."

Today, at 22, he is relishing the chance to do so for Simeone’s Atletico that not even a catheter could persuade him to take a pause. And who could blame him? By setting his team on the way to a 1-1 draw at Leicester, and consequently a 2-1 win on aggregate, Saul had helped his team to reach its third Champions League semi-final in four years.

For that kind of success, he will happily endure a few jeers.