ATLETICO ADD ATTACKING EDGE TO DEFENSIVE DISCIPLINE
▶ Simeone’s side, boosted by arrival of striker Suarez, face tough test against Euro champions Bayern
Any manager new to the Champions League pauses for thought. Should I adapt our natural game, he asks, or trust in what works domestically?
Diego Simeone confronted those questions long ago. Hansi Flick posed them to himself for the first time less than a year ago.
The long- serving manager of Atletico Madrid and his recently-appointed counterpart at Bayern Munich came up with some pretty good answers on their first experience of the most prestigious of club tournaments. Their teams meet in Germany today.
In 2013-14, Simeone led Atletico, who had not gone beyond the European Cup quarter-finals for 40 years, to within a 93rd- minute Sergio Ramos equaliser of winning a final.
Flick did even better. Appointed Bayern’s interim manager, aged 54, he took charge of his first Champions League fixture only last November.
By the middle of August, he was delivering the club’s sixth European Cup triumph. His record in the competition reads: Eight matches, eight wins, 30 goals scored, four conceded.
In that fantastic journey, Barcelona were thrashed 8-2 and in the course of 270 minutes against the best of London, 10 goals were put past Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur.
In the final, the combined might of Paris Saint-Germain’s Neymar and Kylian Mbappe were kept at bay in a 1-0 win, a modest scoreline by the standards of Flick’s Bayern.
Once upon a time, Simeone’s Atletico had some of that swagger. In his first eight matches as a Champions League head coach, seven years ago, Atletico racked up 20 goals.
But over the longer term of the Argentine stamping his rugged personality on the club, a specific image has been set.
Flick summed it up yesterday: “Atletico? Defensively sound, compact, hardworking, passionate and always putting pressure on the opposition.” Atletico have made it to two finals under Simeone, and won two Europa Leagues on his watch largely because they have been wretchedly hard to beat.
They still usually are, as a vibrant Liverpool discovered last March, when they fired off 34 shots to Atletico’s 10 at Anfield, and still saw a 2-0 home lead crumble into a 3-2 defeat in extra time.
That is the classic Atletico. And typical of the club, they made holding onto Jan Oblak, perhaps the most coveted goalkeeper in the sport, their transfer window priority.
Sure enough, they are the only undefeated team in this season’s La Liga. Simeone is proud of that, but also of an Atletico capable of scoring the sort of goal that set up their second victory of the season, against Celta Vigo on Saturday. A fluid, intricately choreographed move, through Koke’s clever chip, Diego Costa’s superb lay-off and a cut-back pass from Manu Sanchez was finished off by Luis Suarez’s third Atletico goal since he joined from Barcelona.
The goal featured four players and just five touches. It was initiated by two old Simeone loyalists, Koka and Costa, finessed by a young academy graduate, Sanchez, and completed by an illustrious capture from the transfer window, Suarez.
That goal was a glimpse of the slick, imaginative Atletico beyond the rugged image.
It is what some big money has been invested in – €120 million ($141.8m) on the brilliant prodigy Joao Felix in 2019; the taking on of Suarez’s high salary – with a view to grafting onto to the solid foundations that yielded silver medals in the Champions League a sharper attacking edge that might bring gold ones.
As Lucas Hernandez, the Bayern defender who played under Simeone for five seasons before moving to Germany last year, pointed out, Simeone’s Atletico may have a distinct brand, but they have also developed.
“They will always give you a hard game because they are so tough, and defend so well,” said Hernandez, who played in Bayern’s 4-1 Bundesliga win against Arminia Bielefeld on Saturday, a result that leaves the club sitting second in the table, behind RB Leipzig by a point.
“But you can’t compare them with, say, four years ago. There are different players there now and while they still defend well, they have a lot of quality up front.”
Costa misses the trip to Bayern with injury, and Sanchez concedes his place to Renan Lodi, the squad’s senior leftback. Simeone will also be without Jose Gimenez from central defence and Saul Niguez from midfield, both with fitness issues.
Lucas Torreira, signed on loan from Arsenal at the close of the transfer window, could make his debut in the Champions League, a competition the 24-year-old Uruguayan has yet to play in.
Flick could line-up a Bayern starting XI almost the same as the one that beat PSG to lift the trophy in Lisbon in August, except that Thiago Alcantara has since left for Liverpool.
Hernandez, in form this season, may start at left back instead of Alphonso Davies, while Leroy Sane, the star summer recruit, is still recovering from a knee problem.