Diego Simeone, Atletico Madrid Aren't Done with Champions League, or Each Other

“Nobody is more important than the team. Not even Messi.” When Diego Simeone’s conversation with Argentinian newspaper La Nacion was recently published, as recounted by Marca (in Spanish), he couldn’t have sounded any more like himself.

Many coaches are the polar opposites to themselves as players. Take West Ham United’s (and previously Besiktas’) easy-on-the-eye attacking zip, under the tutelage of Slaven Bilic, once an uncompromising centre-back. Even look elsewhere in La Liga at Valencia, currently a shambles at the back under Gary Neville, one of the outstanding defenders of his generation.

With Simeone, though, it’s sometimes hard to see the seam between player and boss. As a midfielder with Lazio, Inter Milan, Argentina and (of course) Atletico Madrid among others, he’d do whatever it took to win. The same is true of Simeone the coach. Perhaps even more so.

One never gets the impression that "Cholo" asks his players to do anything that he wouldn’t have done himself. Whether those standards are necessarily reasonable is perhaps an entirely different question.

When it started to become clear that one of the historic 2013-14 season’s kingpins, the marvellous Arda Turan, wanted to move on, Marca claimed that it was because Turkey’s golden boy simply couldn’t face the physical demands of the Atleti coach’s credo anymore.

Paul White/Associated Press

"Demands" may sometimes come from the playbook of journalistic cliche. Not in the case of Simeone. It’s almost always the right word to describe what he requires.

In his press conference to preview Atleti’s UEFA Champions League last-16 second leg with PSV Eindhoven on Tuesday, the coach again reminded us what a hard taskmaster he is.

“I hope (Antoine) Griezmann continues responding to the team needs as he has been doing and like the rest of the squad,” Simeone told the media, per UEFA.com. This is the same Antoine Griezmann whose goals have carried Atleti this season. Having hit 25 in all competitions last season, a personal record, the French international already has 23 this time around.

Griezmann has rarely had it easy in his career, having been heartbroken to be rejected by Lyon for being too small at 14, before moving to Spain to make his way at Real Sociedad as a teenager and debuting in the second tier. He has fought tooth and nail to be where he is.

Yet, as is his way, Simeone still wants more. The message is clear. Over four years into the job at the Vicente Calderon, and the coach doesn’t show any signs of slackening that tight leash.

His continued hunger and intensity is remarkable. Plenty have assumed that such a motivated coach would eventually see a ceiling in place at Atleti, and move on accordingly. As recently as last month OK Diario—as reproduced by Metro—claimed that Simeone had agreed a deal to move to Chelsea as Jose Mourinho’s permanent replacement.

Francisco Seco/Associated Press

It is not only the imminent hire of Antonio Conte by the Blues, or the fact that Simeone signed an extended deal to stay at the club until 2020 just under a year ago, per ESPN FC, that quickly makes mincemeat of this chatter.

This week’s line on Griezmann shows exactly where Simeone is coming from. He has got more out of the Atleti squads of the last few years than even the outlandish speculator would dare to suggest, but he still sees the possibility to take it further.

There is plenty of merit in this view. All of Atleti’s new signings from last summer’s extensive investment took their time to settle—Jackson Martinez, of course, didn’t make it at all and has already taken his leave—and as exciting youngsters like Luciano Vietto and (especially) Yannick Ferreira-Carrasco find their feet, Atleti could gain a new dimension.

The talk at the top of the season was of a changed, more expansive Atletico, but that idea seems to have taken a back seat, for now at least. They are most effective doing what they have always done under Simeone, smothering and hitting hard from set pieces and rapid switches of play in the final third.

Unusually for the team that is clearly the second best in the division behind Barca, their style is—still—not to attempt to monopolise territorially. Seven teams in La Liga average more than 50 per cent possession in games, and Atletico are not one of them, per WhoScored.com. 

When they do have plenty of the ball, Atleti don’t look entirely at ease with it. The first leg in Eindhoven against PSV was a case in point. They looked dangerous in the first half, when Gabi’s raking long passes over the top sought out Griezmann and Vietto. It was in this spell that Atleti should have scored the goal—or goals—that would have killed the tie stone dead already.

Francisco Seco/Associated Press

Instead, they were even more toothless against 10 men, after Gaston Pereiro’s red card, than they had been against 11. Challenged to make the play by a PSV side sitting back and soaking up, Atleti rarely looked close to a definitive answer.

As Simeone aims towards a solution, he is not without compassion. After Saturday night’s win over Deportivo La Coruna, he made a point of praising Vietto (in Spanish, via La Liga’s YouTube channel), and the fluidity that his young compatriot brings to Atleti’s game at the sharp end.

One suspects Vietto appreciated it, having now gone 840 minutes without a goal in all competitions. Perhaps Simeone (and Vietto) will get his reward against PSV.

It is this humanity that makes his tough-love approach, endured by Ferreira-Carrasco this season as well as Griezmann, accepted by his squad. As his words to La Nacion underlined (as well as the recent derby victory over a disjointed Real Madrid), that La Liga’s—and probably the world’s—greatest club team in Barcelona show genuine collective buy-in is a huge step to real achievement further helps him.

Whether it would fly in another environment, at the top end of the Premier League, is still open to question. At the Calderon, the continued results are a persuasive case to stay, and his relationship with the club is a special one too. That was something only enhanced by the shared pain of victory being snatched away at the last in the 2014 Champions League final against Real Madrid in Lisbon.

Simeone is a man whose actions are informed by history, and obligation, as well as by commitment and attention to detail. All those factors tell us that the Champions League remains a real target, and that he isn’t done with it—or with Atletico.