DIEGO SIMEONE SPENT a sizeable and hilarious portion of the opening weeks of this season encased in glass.
Not as part of an avant-garde art installation; rather the Atletico Madrid boss was serving an extended touchline ban on account of his roughing-up of a referee in the Spanish Super Cup win over Real Madrid.
As if to contain his animal charisma, Simeone was sealed off in a series of corporate boxes at away grounds. Therein, he would rage and gesticulate, slamming fists onto the transparent walls of his Perspex cages, which would wobble and bend at the force of the kinetic energy within.
Atletico didn’t do too badly while Simeone was hermetically sealed — three wins and two draws — but Simeone didn’t like it. He felt ‘impotent’. As his La Liga opponents understood when stationing him as far away from his team as possible, the alpha-male virility that Simeone exudes is the central motif of this Atletico team.
It’s not just his touchline presence — prowling, snarling, big cat at feeding time — and his look (Chicano gang boss with a grievance). He wants his team to personify a sense of rugged manliness not seen in Western culture since pre-irony Chuck Norris.
“I want to thank the mothers of these kids, because they were born with balls this big,” he announced after his side had eliminated Chelsea in last season’s Champions League semi-final.
The testicular-fixated, guerilla firebrand schtick is perfectly attuned to Atletico. For them, the underdog, working class club of the city, in eternal opposition to the aspirational, upwardly mobile Real, Simeone is a classic rebel icon.
“We see ourselves reflected in society, in people who have to fight to keep going,” he said during last season’s title run-in. “As soon as we stop fighting we have no chance. People identify with us, we’re a source of hope to them.” [Memo to self: idea for screenplay..."Che Guevara: Football Manager."]
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El Cholo (he even has a cool-sounding nickname) has achieved great things at Atletico with this belligerent crusade. They play a brand of football intended to upset, to defy, to make clear that the club known as El Pupas (The Jinxed One) — since blowing the 1974 European Cup final against Bayern Munich — won’t lie down anymore. It is aggressive, high-intensity, bloody annoying.
And the touchline antics don’t win many friends either. A global audience tut-tutted at Simeone’s meltdown in last season’s Champions League final loss to Real. Atletico’s late collapse in Lisbon was, ironically, classic El Pupas, but their coach had no truck with fatalism. Rather, Simeone was the drunken guest asked to leave a wedding party, but not before puking on the cake and making a pass at the bride’s mother.
Simeone speaking at a press conference last month to announce his contract extension. AP / Press Association Images
AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images
Simeone’s assistant, German ‘Mono’ Burgos, earned notoriety in December 2012 during a confrontation with Jose Mourinho. “I’m not Tito [Vilanova], I’ll rip your head off!” he growled, in reference to Mourinho’s infamous eye-poke on the late Barcelona coach.
During this season’s round of 16 first-leg, Bayer Leverkusen coach Roger Schmidt squared up to the terrifying pair. “The assistant coach is madness,” he told ZDF TV after the match. “That’s their scam, they always send him ahead to cause a stir. But I won’t put up with it.”
But away from the image of musky machismo Simeone projects, there is careful thought in the construction of his managerial career. “I found him obsessive, an arduous student of world football… extremely intelligent,” one River Plate éminence grise told Marcela Mora y Araujo following his title win with the Argentine club in 2008.
Then there are the finer details. Atletico score more goals from set-pieces than anyone else in Europe’s top five leagues (26 alone this season; Werder Bremen are next with just 17), with all the planning and innovation that requires. During a recent game, Burgos became the first member of a football coaching staff to use Google Glass, feeding real-time statistics into the Atletico brains trust.
This, then, is the mix of aggression and acumen that signed a new contract with Atletico last month. The announcement was branded #SIMEONE2020 and the talk was empire-building, not futile insurrection.
“I see a club that is moving forward,” he pronounced. “I see eagerness to grow and people willing to collaborate. We all love Atletico Madrid, and we all want to grow together.”
But although his presence at Atletico, a club for whom he’d been a legendary player, has the sense of manifest destiny, they first had to prove their ambition a match for his.
Simeone had been strongly linked to the likely upcoming vacancy at Manchester City. The fit was obvious: a once unfashionable, now rejuvenated club, perennially cap-doffing to more glamorous city rivals, requiring an incendiary presence to rocket a slumbering dressing room back to life.
But Cholo is staying put.
‘The Big Leap’ is how Atletico describe their move to a new 70,000-seater stadium planned for the start of the 2016/17 season. In keeping with the flow of foreign investment into Spanish football, the club is sponsored by the oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan, while the Chinese property conglomerate Dalian Wanda bought 20% of Atletico in January, a drive towards new markets that also saw them establish Atletico Kolkata in the Indian Super League.
They may have lost Thibaut Courtois, Diego Costa and Felipe Luis after last season’s exploits, but they recruited to the tune of almost €120million, with Mario Mandzukic and Antoine Griezmann particularly fine additions. Simeone was persuaded by all of this, and a hashtag was born.
So can Atletico follow last year’s title success with a permanent seat at the Spanish top table? Beating Real in the Champions League quarter-finals wouldn’t be a major jump for a team that have done just that four times already this season. But removing the holders’ grip on the trophy they consider a supreme totem would make it a triumph with special symbolism.
A big leap, you might say.
Tommy Martin presents Champions League football on Tuesday nights for TV3.
Bollocks and brains - Can Simeone make the big leap with Atletico?
DIEGO SIMEONE SPENT a sizeable and hilarious portion of the opening weeks of this season encased in glass.
Not as part of an avant-garde art installation; rather the Atletico Madrid boss was serving an extended touchline ban on account of his roughing-up of a referee in the Spanish Super Cup win over Real Madrid.
As if to contain his animal charisma, Simeone was sealed off in a series of corporate boxes at away grounds. Therein, he would rage and gesticulate, slamming fists onto the transparent walls of his Perspex cages, which would wobble and bend at the force of the kinetic energy within.
Atletico didn’t do too badly while Simeone was hermetically sealed — three wins and two draws — but Simeone didn’t like it. He felt ‘impotent’. As his La Liga opponents understood when stationing him as far away from his team as possible, the alpha-male virility that Simeone exudes is the central motif of this Atletico team.
It’s not just his touchline presence — prowling, snarling, big cat at feeding time — and his look (Chicano gang boss with a grievance). He wants his team to personify a sense of rugged manliness not seen in Western culture since pre-irony Chuck Norris.
The testicular-fixated, guerilla firebrand schtick is perfectly attuned to Atletico. For them, the underdog, working class club of the city, in eternal opposition to the aspirational, upwardly mobile Real, Simeone is a classic rebel icon.
“We see ourselves reflected in society, in people who have to fight to keep going,” he said during last season’s title run-in. “As soon as we stop fighting we have no chance. People identify with us, we’re a source of hope to them.” [Memo to self: idea for screenplay..."Che Guevara: Football Manager."]
El Cholo (he even has a cool-sounding nickname) has achieved great things at Atletico with this belligerent crusade. They play a brand of football intended to upset, to defy, to make clear that the club known as El Pupas (The Jinxed One) — since blowing the 1974 European Cup final against Bayern Munich — won’t lie down anymore. It is aggressive, high-intensity, bloody annoying.
And the touchline antics don’t win many friends either. A global audience tut-tutted at Simeone’s meltdown in last season’s Champions League final loss to Real. Atletico’s late collapse in Lisbon was, ironically, classic El Pupas, but their coach had no truck with fatalism. Rather, Simeone was the drunken guest asked to leave a wedding party, but not before puking on the cake and making a pass at the bride’s mother.
Simeone’s assistant, German ‘Mono’ Burgos, earned notoriety in December 2012 during a confrontation with Jose Mourinho. “I’m not Tito [Vilanova], I’ll rip your head off!” he growled, in reference to Mourinho’s infamous eye-poke on the late Barcelona coach.
During this season’s round of 16 first-leg, Bayer Leverkusen coach Roger Schmidt squared up to the terrifying pair. “The assistant coach is madness,” he told ZDF TV after the match. “That’s their scam, they always send him ahead to cause a stir. But I won’t put up with it.”
But away from the image of musky machismo Simeone projects, there is careful thought in the construction of his managerial career. “I found him obsessive, an arduous student of world football… extremely intelligent,” one River Plate éminence grise told Marcela Mora y Araujo following his title win with the Argentine club in 2008.
Then there are the finer details. Atletico score more goals from set-pieces than anyone else in Europe’s top five leagues (26 alone this season; Werder Bremen are next with just 17), with all the planning and innovation that requires. During a recent game, Burgos became the first member of a football coaching staff to use Google Glass, feeding real-time statistics into the Atletico brains trust.
This, then, is the mix of aggression and acumen that signed a new contract with Atletico last month. The announcement was branded #SIMEONE2020 and the talk was empire-building, not futile insurrection.
But although his presence at Atletico, a club for whom he’d been a legendary player, has the sense of manifest destiny, they first had to prove their ambition a match for his.
Simeone had been strongly linked to the likely upcoming vacancy at Manchester City. The fit was obvious: a once unfashionable, now rejuvenated club, perennially cap-doffing to more glamorous city rivals, requiring an incendiary presence to rocket a slumbering dressing room back to life.
But Cholo is staying put.
‘The Big Leap’ is how Atletico describe their move to a new 70,000-seater stadium planned for the start of the 2016/17 season. In keeping with the flow of foreign investment into Spanish football, the club is sponsored by the oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan, while the Chinese property conglomerate Dalian Wanda bought 20% of Atletico in January, a drive towards new markets that also saw them establish Atletico Kolkata in the Indian Super League.
They may have lost Thibaut Courtois, Diego Costa and Felipe Luis after last season’s exploits, but they recruited to the tune of almost €120million, with Mario Mandzukic and Antoine Griezmann particularly fine additions. Simeone was persuaded by all of this, and a hashtag was born.
So can Atletico follow last year’s title success with a permanent seat at the Spanish top table? Beating Real in the Champions League quarter-finals wouldn’t be a major jump for a team that have done just that four times already this season. But removing the holders’ grip on the trophy they consider a supreme totem would make it a triumph with special symbolism.
A big leap, you might say.
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