Simeone’s time to tear down and build
He may have been known for gamesmanship as a player, but Diego Simeone the coach is usually unfailingly honest in his assessment of situations. After a fortuitous away win over Liverpool in the previous round of the Champions League, he called Jurgen Klopp’s team “the best opponent that we’ve played against in my eight years at the club”. On Thursday night, as RB Leipzig — a team that has been in existence just a couple of years longer than Simeone has coached Atleti — deservedly progressed to the last four, he admitted that his team hadn’t deserved anything more.
“We haven’t been able to play the way we wanted,” he said after the 2–1 defeat. “I liked Leipzig. They had great determination, enthusiasm and freshness. That cost us. There are no excuses.”
No excuses, but plenty of questions to answer as Atleti ended another underwhelming season. Never part of the title race in Spain, they were indebted to a strong run of form after the lifting of the Coronavirus lockdown for the eventual third-place finish, 17 points behind Real Madrid. It marked their eighth successive season in the top three, but the points tally of 70 was the worst since Simeone took charge.
Simeone is by far the longest-serving coach at one of Europe’s elite clubs, and the very fact that they’re part of such a conversation is down to his achievements. He’s been there nearly twice as long as Jurgen Klopp has been at Liverpool. It will be nine years in December, an eternity in today’s hire-and-fire culture.
But has the magic worn off? In his first four seasons in the Champions League, Simeone finished runner-up twice, reached a semi and a quarterfinal. His conquerors on every single occasion? Real Madrid. Atleti were desperately unlucky on occasion — Sergio Ramos’s equaliser in the 2014 final came in the fourth minute of added-on time — but Real had Cristiano Ronaldo and a host of other game-changers to call on. As painful as it was, losing to them was no disgrace.
In the three seasons since, they have failed to make it out of the group phase (Roma and Chelsea qualified), been at the receiving end of a Ronaldo hat-trick in Turin after winning the home leg 2–0, and been dominated by a Leipzig side that had sold Timo Werner, their leading striker, earlier in the summer.
Those results in themselves aren’t cause for undue alarm, but when you look at the downturn in domestic performances, it’s natural to ask if things have gone a little stale. Klopp lasted seven years at Mainz and seven at Dortmund, and has often spoken of how players stop responding with the same enthusiasm once you’ve come to be regarded as part of the furniture.
Atleti’s biggest problem in recent seasons has been a lack of goals. This is a team that even in the darkest times always boasted a gun centre-forward. A young Fernando Torres led the line for years, before his departure to Liverpool paved the way for Sergio Aguero and Diego Forlan. After that came Radamel Falcao, Diego Costa and Antoine Griezmann, top scorer for five consecutive seasons before he left for Barcelona last summer.
When Atleti won the title in 2013–14, Costa led the way as they scored 77 goals in their 38 league matches. In the last three seasons, the goals-for column has shown 58, 55 and 51. Even seventh-placed Granada scored more this season. If Atleti have continued to stay in the top three, it’s only because no Simeone defence has ever conceded more than 31 goals a season.
Simeone’s chosen method had always been about hitting teams on the counter after soaking up limitless pressure. But these days, they aren’t as defensively robust either. At Anfield, for example, they might have lost 4–0 in normal time but for Liverpool’s profligate finishing. In the title run in 2013–14, Diego Godin and Miranda were rocks at the heart of the defence. Godin departed for Inter last summer, and the defence has lacked a leader and organiser of that stature. The 16 draws Atleti racked up in La Liga were partly because of the inability to hold on to the old, patented 1–0 scoreline.
It was easy to be critical of Griezmann when he departed, and things haven’t exactly gone swimmingly for him in Barcelona, but you also have to question just how much fun it is to play for Atleti these days. When you hear that Thomas Partey — who didn’t get off the bench against Leipzig, despite starring in the Anfield win — is considering a move to Arsenal, the alarm bells ring out loud.
Any way you look at it, Atleti are a much bigger club at present. Arsenal will soon start their fourth season out of the Champions League, and you have to go back to the pre-Simeone days a decade ago for their last quarterfinal appearance. But with Mikel Arteta as coach, there’s a feeling that Arsenal are on an upward trajectory. Atleti have been flatlining for a few seasons now.
The fun element can’t be discounted either. Footballers want to win trophies, but they also love being part of teams that are lauded and celebrated for their attacking verve. When players openly talk of their desire to play for Klopp or Pep Guardiola, it doesn’t just stem from a desire to win silverware. Joao Felix was outstanding when he came on for Atleti against Leipzig, but there have been many games where he and the other attacking players were hunting for scraps as Atleti sat deeper and deeper. For players like that, playing in Simeone’s current team can’t be much fun.
Can he change things around? Of course. This isn’t an aging side. The average age against Leipzig was 27, and men like Felix (20), Marcos Llorente (25) and Saul Niguez (25) have many good years in front of them. The question is whether Simeone can find the goal-scorer who makes them less one-dimensional.
They may be the 13th richest club in the world, with a total income of 324 million pounds, but Atletico simply cannot afford to get it wrong in the transfer market as they have in recent seasons. Costa hasn’t been the battering ram of old since his return from Chelsea in 2017, and the eye-watering 67 million paid to get him back seems very excessive now. Thomas Lemar and Vitolo cost 96 million between them, and have yet to score even half a dozen goals. A management team with less credit in the bank would have been sacked for far less.
Ultimately though, it comes down to Simeone. He has shown that he can still light a fire under his players on occasion, but can he do it on a continuous basis as was the case a few seasons ago? Will a newer generation of players perhaps envious of the way Liverpool, City and PSG play even buy in to his methods?
A Catholic who wears a crucifix and crosses himself before every game, Simeone should spent the off-season reflecting on the book of Ecclesiastes, and its words: “a time to tear down and a time to build.” With no vacancies likely at any top European club other than Barcelona, he doesn’t even have anywhere else to go. Reinventing himself, and his team, may be the only answer.
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