Waldemar Iglesias
08/13/2020 - 7:31
- Clarín.com
- sports
Diego Simeone is pure intensity. He lives thinking about football all the time . He is capable of sitting in a restaurant in Madrid with a friend or a collaborator and explaining a play that did not go well in an old game against Getafe. It is also observed in any training session at his Atlético or on the edge of the playing field, in the memories of Vicente Calderón or in the new Metropolitan Stadium.
He identifies with Marcelo Bielsa, with Alfio Basile, with Carlos Bilardo. He praises all three of them, he has things from all three. But the Cholo with the knife between his teeth forged his own style, the one that led him to refound a club: Atlético de Madrid. Since his arrival in December 2011, there is another life in that club that seemed bound to frequent defeat. None of that: seven titles, two Champions League finals, eight consecutive seasons on the podium of the Spanish League (the one with the highest UEFA coefficient), which is usually dominated by the two richest teams in the world, with the two teams of higher market value. El Cholo - a nickname inherited from the lower ranks, through the mouth of Victorio Spinetto - does what he always does: he offers fight da fight.
His speech portrays him:
“When I was ten years old, the music teacher at my school chose me as the conductor. Something of a leader will have seen me, because almost all of them were older than me ”.
Simeone -with 50 years that his body and face deny- is a consecrated person. He was as a footballer and he is as a coach. But above all things he is a leader. Natural, without twists. "Either you are convinced or you are not," he usually says in the many talks he has been holding with his teams for almost a decade.
That is one of the great triumphs of Cholo: from his place to turn his teams into a group of convinced .
“As a player it's easy. You only think about yourself. Later, if you have a head, you also think about the team. The coach has to think of everyone, on the contrary "
Simeone thinks of everyone and everything . It is in every detail. Manages even beyond the strict role of coach . His relationship with the players does not deteriorate if they have to sit on the bench or are off the squad list. Everyone knows it's on behalf of the team. Everyone knows that they will have their chance and that there will be no whims.
He is an enemy of the specter of internal controversy. In the worst case, he is the one who puts his face to the complaints or criticism .
"I'd rather play nice than play nice."
The coach who was also champion with Estudiantes (in 2006) and with River (in 2008) and runner-up with the club of which he is a fan, Racing (in 2011) is not bothered by criticism for his alleged defensive eagerness. Always explain what it is about. Flee from certain conventions linked to the false antinomy: defensive vs. offensive.
But he does not deny the relevance of defending. He is not hiding in words that explain the guilt of putting the eleven players behind the line of the ball. "You don't always play what you want; sometimes you have to play what you can," he says.
"You have to play each game as if it were the last"
For Cholo all matches are a final . That simple From the beginning of the week until the end of the meeting . He prepares to always win what comes. "Match by match," he likes to say. A kind of "step by step" of Mustard Merlo, Madrid version. And that transmits. There is no room to decline in pursuit of the goal.
"He who does not give everything does not give anything" , is another of his frequent messages in his talks of the week at the Majadahonda Sports City, where the squad trains in Simeone mode: with everything until the last of the sweats.
“The effort is not negotiable. Nor do I tolerate conformism. Passivity is far from me ”.
It is permeable to some technical failure, some wrong goal, some sloppy center, some out of time. "All that can happen. It's football and we are fallible . " But there is a non-negotiable issue: the effort on behalf of the collective. No one is saved alone at Atlético.
It is a cooperative of soccer players (millionaires, yes) that knows the way forward, that this path will have thorns and that there will be stumbling blocks, and that we must continue until there is nothing left to deliver, until it is empty for everything offered. Always like this. So in every game .
“I do not reject anything. I watch a lot of football and read about psychology. If you set up the group, the team appears much easier "
He does not believe in absolute truths. Consider that no one has the little book of truth or the formula for victory. Don't sit around listening to praise. Nor those applause and ovations that still move him.
Read psychology, for example. He understands that it helps him improve himself and make others better, especially his players. The bond that he establishes, in most cases, resembles an idyll . Neither those who are nor those who were speak ill of him. A trait very similar to that of Bielsa, although with different ways and strategies.
"Sacrifice is the magic that transforms successes into reality."
When Koke and Saúl - two emerging from the club's quarry - go to the floor and retrieve a ball, after scraping, Simeone celebrates the scene as if it were a goal. When Angel Correa comes and goes for either of the two bands, he applauds him. Celebrate the sacrifice.
There is a paradigmatic example that Simeone usually tells in interviews. When Diego Costa arrived at Atlético, he had no place to offer him. Adrián and Falcao played upstairs. "Look, I'm not going to put you. I have no place for you. But I want you to train with us so that you get to know the group ," the Brazilian nationalized Spanish told him as soon as he arrived. He saw him train. It was a machine. It did not stop. He scored goals from all sides. Soon, Simeone called him and said, "You won the job. You are going to play." And Diego Costa did not disappoint. He won five of the seven titles in the Era Simeone in the three cycles he had at the club. He was a scorer and emblem.
At a press conference, while Griezmann was in the sights of Barcelona, a journalist asked him:
-Was Griezmann the best reinforcement of your cycle?
-He is a great player, nobody can deny it, but the best was Diego Costa.
“I enjoy winning a title. But what has already been done is left behind. Soccer is always tomorrow ”.
He is the best paid coach in the world (with 3.6 million euros). But none of those bills devour your passion. It does not change the perception, the search. He always wants more. And it goes for more. He celebrates the consecration for a while, but immediately he is already thinking about what is coming.
"Well guys, that's it. See you at training on Thursday." There is no rest. Passion drives him. Even more than the victories.
"My parents would give me a fort to play with and I would set it up like a soccer game between Indians against soldiers"
He had it in his blood to football. He dreamed of playing. And he played, since he was a kid in Vélez, in the youth teams, in the major (he won four titles in the days of Basile: two America's Cups, the FIFA Confederations Cup and the Artemio Franchi), he went through Italian football, through the Spanish. He left good memories in every corner.
And so his desire for soccer continued. In his days as a player, in his first stage at Atlético, "at 24 or 25 years old," he recalls, he had a notebook that he used to imagine and write training methods, how to do a practice, how to mechanize movements . An obsessive. Half a century of life. Half a century of football lived.
Curious detail: in that fort of Indians against soldiers, surely he chose the Indians. As a determinism: Indians tell Athletes. Those whom Simeone led to glory with his leadership and cunning.
"As a player I did not change the Atleti shirt, they had to give me two, mine was worth more"
Proud and competitive, he always knew how to adapt to each environment in which he expressed himself as a footballer and as a coach. At Atlético he played between 1994 and 1997, there were 123 games and 28 goals. In 1996, he won the Double (League and Cup). He was key in that memorable team. That year he was shortlisted for the Ballon d'Or, something unusual for a FIFA that does not usually celebrate combative midfielders.
Perhaps that attitude of not changing the shirt (in the National Team, he learned it from Bilardo) had to do with another detail: he ran and offered twice as much as almost all his rivals. That's why I was claiming two shirts.
"Luis will be proud, this team is like him, brave and a fighter"
Luis is Aragonese, undying glory of the club from the times of Vicente Calderón, on the banks of the Manzanares River. Cholo always knew how to get to the fan. With his phrases, remembering cracks, teams, anecdotes; with his harangues from the edge of the playing field and with his messages from press conferences.
-We are the people's team. We are the team of the people. We are the one who annoys.
This is how he also builds what he considers so valuable: identity .
“I believe in order before anything else and above all else. Order is a way of living on the court "
Order, mechanization, priority of the group over individuality. "It's all together or it's not , " he told his players at the start of the preseason of this 19/20 campaign. And so, in this way, the intended role does not wane. Beyond Real Madrid and Barcelona facing each other, Atlético compete, compete and compete.
Always. And in every place.
"Listen well. I want to tell you why these guys won yesterday's game. Because they played with the hearts of all of you ”.
The phrase happened in the celebration after the conquest of the European Super Cup against Chelsea, in 2012. Another way of understanding Atlético del Cholo: even the fans are in the plan, Gratitude on one side; gratitude of the other. Self-esteem returned to dressing in rojiblanco.
As the Centennial Anthem says, a creation of Joaquín Sabina, one of Atlético's most famous fans:
"What way to endure / what way to grow / what way to feel / what way to dream / what way to learn / what way to suffer / what way to clap / what way to overcome / what way to live" ,
"It doesn't bother me that they say we are an annoying team, we want to be an annoying team."
The annoying team will play this Thursday for the quarterfinals of the Champions League, in Lisbon against Leipzig, one of the revelations of the competition.
There will be several certainties beyond the result: we will see an Atlético del Cholo. The usual, the one who fights until the last of his breaths, the intense, the convinced, the one who does not allow disloyalty with the delivery.