Julian Alvarez's hat-trick secured a 3-2 win for Atletico Madrid against Rayo Vallecano at the Estadio Metropolitano.

Diego Simeone backed his Argentina forward to bounce back from his penalty miss last time out, and Alvarez did exactly that, scoring the winner with a thunderous strike from outside the box in the 88th minute.

Alvarez scored his first early on, volleying home with his weaker left foot from Marcos Llorente's cross, but Vallecano fired back with an even better strike as Pep Chavarria fired a rocket from close to 30 yards out to beat Jan Oblak.

The visitors thought they scored a potential winner after 77 minutes, with Alvaro Garcia finding the back of the net against the run of play, but Alvarez was not willing to drop points in another LaLiga match.

The 25-year-old quickly equalised for Atleti, reacting first to a rebound after Augusto Batalla made an incredible initial save to deny Giuliano Simeone's header, and Alvarez then sent the home fans into rapture with his brilliant winner.

It could have been a far simpler win for Simone's side, with Atleti producing 3.98 expected goals (xG) from 20 attempts to Vallecano's 0.91 from nine shots, but he will be glad to see his team register just their second win of the season.

Data Debrief: Familiar joy for Atleti against Vallecano

Atletico's unbeaten record against Vallecano was under threat for a moment, but Alvarez, who increased his LaLiga goal tally for 2025-26 to four, kept their impressive run going.

Simeone's side have not lost any of their last 17 matches against Vallecano in LaLiga (W14 D3), their longest unbeaten run against them in the competition, while the coach has won 90.9% of his home games against them (G11 W10 D1),

Only against Real Valladolid (100% - 7P W7) and Real Betis (92.3% - G12 W11 D1) does he have a better home winning percentage with a minimum of six matches played.

Meanwhile, Chavarría's goal was the ninth scored by a Vallecano defender from outside the box in LaLiga since 2022-23, making them the team with the most such goals scored by defenders in the last four seasons in the competition.