Assistant to head coach Simeone - and the soul of the team: Germán Burgos
Photo:GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP
He almost cried before the last home game. And it might have happened if fans could have been in the stadium of Atlético Madrid. The team, coaching team and club management gathered for applause when the best scenes of the past decade were shown on the screen and "El Mono" Burgos came running out of the home cabin for Adiós; the man who has been much more than just Diego Pablo Simeone's assistant coach over the years.
"My heart was beating, I had to swallow," Burgos later told the newspaper "El País". He paused, kneeled down, and kissed the club crest on the sidelines. But he held back the tears, because: "Rockers don't cry".
The former Argentinian national goalkeeper has always been a rocker. Sometimes with wild gestures on the sidelines, where he will experience his last days of service for Atlético from today in the Champions League final tournament with the quarter-finals against Leipzig. But he also really makes music: The Garb is named after the four initials of his real name, Germán Adrián Ramón Burgos. The nickname "Mono" - monkey - on the other hand, comes from football: his first coach Carlos Gruigol at the Ferro Carril Oeste club gave him this because of the span of his arms.
Burgos and Simeone, here in 2018, have been working together since 2011
Photo:Bryn Lennon / Getty Images
The Garb's last record dates from 2005. Chain smoker Burgos then devoted himself to the adventures with Simeone too intensely. They started in Catania at the beginning of 2011 and led the team to Atlético on Christmas of the same year. The rest is history, and if Burgos leaves now, it will not be because of an argument or because he wanted to tour again in the future. Burgos would like to be the head coach himself. The monkey breaks out.
Anyone who still remembers him as an active person could be surprised anyway that he could hold out in the second row for so long. "El Mono" was a free spirit who appeared when he was presented as an Atlético professional with a mullet, sunglasses in his hair, a bright green muscle shirt and an upper arm tattoo (which was actually still a rarity among footballers at the time). As well as the history of a suspension of eleven games as RCD Mallorca goalkeeper because of a punch against a striker from Espanyol. "I am hard as a stone": he also used this motto against himself. In 2003 he broke his nose when he parried a penalty from Luís Figo with her in a derby against Real.
German Burgos, Atletico 2003 goalkeeper
Photo: imago / ActionPicturesThe son of a hairdresser, who preferred to play with balloon pants and a baseball cap over his shoulder-length hair and entertained the fans with insoles a la René Higuita, experienced the darkest days of Atlético as an active player. Where Simeone won the only double in club history as a midfield strategist in 1996, Burgos signed on with a second division team. In this way he became a symbol of the "never-say-die" identity of Atlético. After a successful recovery, he crawled through a manhole cover in one of the club's commercials back up onto the boulevards of the capital.
It all started in a Madrid bookstore
With a total of 18 games, he has coached more games than some bosses in Atlético's checkered history - so often Simeone was suspended for insulting the referee. As match manager, Burgos won the Spanish Supercup in 2014 and the Europa League and the European Supercup in 2018. But his contribution to the other triumphs, first and foremost the 2014 championship and the 2014 and 2016 Champions League finals, should not be underestimated.
It all started in a Madrid bookstore. After Simeone's appointment, Burgos left a specialist shop with 14 works on the subject of standard situations. Especially in the early years of the duo, corners and free kicks became the decisive factor in countless 1-0 victories of the defensive artists.
But Burgos was also considered the soul of the team, responsible for the fact that the tight Simeone regiment brought unusually little fatigue over nine years. Be it with music gigs at team evenings or with sayings on the training ground. In its aphorisms and cryptic leaps of thought, his idiosyncratic language is sometimes reminiscent of the great compatriot Diego Maradona (of the better times). "I dream of finding walls to fill them with televisions like at the airport," he said recently on the radio station "Ser". Burgos said that he likes to watch as many soccer games as possible at the same time.
It should be a club in Spain
After years in the job, he attests to himself being "the periscope of a submarine", with which he can already guess the form of the opponent for the day while observing the warm-up training. When he briefly coached the Madrid suburban club Carabanchel before partnering with Simeone, he was seen pacing the field before away games in the style of his former national coach "El Loco" Bielsa to measure the field. In the spirit of the teacher, Burgos can be called a football madman, and that's why he wants to try it alone. "I felt that I had to do it; if not now, I would never have done it."
He doesn't have a club yet, but it should be in Spain. At Atlético, the previous third Nelson Vivas will move up for him, whose post Simeone's ex-captain Gabi could take over. Burgos definitely wants to stay friends with the man with whom he "gets along with looks" and makes a duo like "De Niro and Pesci". And with which he has not won one thing so far: the Champions League. "It owes us football," said El Mono Burgos. We'll see if there will be tears.
Icon: The mirror
