WE LIKE TO ANNOY PEOPLE!
What drives the club that found Torres, Aguero and Costa? Pete Jenson in Madrid talks to Atletico president Enrique Cerezo
‘It can’t be good for a club to have a foreign owner’ ‘We would love it if Diego Costa came back to Atletico’
ATLETICO MADRID’S president thinks he knows why diego simeone is still at the club. It’s not because Chelsea and Manchester United failed to bring him to England.
It’s not that he didn’t consider the offers and briefly hire an English teacher to see if he could break down the language barrier.
It is because, in the words of Enrique Cerezo, ‘simeone is the perfect coach for atletico Madrid’.
He will be in his natural habitat tomorrow night in the Champions League quarter-final second leg against Barcelona — the man in black prowling the touchline at the Vicente Calderon, looking like a Quentin Tarantino character in a Reservoir Dogs sequel.
reservoir Underdogs would better suit the team who won the league in 2014 and reached the Champions League final.
They are three points off the summit in spain and desperately want to get back to the European Cup final to make amends for losing it in extra time to real Madrid in 2014.
‘When the board went up for five minutes of injury time I was convinced we had done it,’ Enrique reflects. ‘You would never believe they would score in the last minute. But then you would never believe that same season we would go to the Nou Camp and get a draw on the last day to win the league.’
They beat Barcelona in the quarterfinals on their way to that Lisbon final with a 1-0 second-leg victory at the Vicente Calderon. The same result will do for them tomorrow.
‘We want to get to the last four and annoy people in the Champions League just like we are doing in La Liga,’ says simeone, who is proud to call his side a ‘ nuisance team’ who gatecrash the big two’s private party.
The atletico president is not impressed by the idea of free passes into the Champions League for the socalled big clubs mooted by Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu last month.
‘The year we got to the final we had to beat Milan, Barcelona and Chelsea,’ he says. They earned their place, why shouldn’t everyone else?’
Nor does he have much time for the idea of a European super League. ‘You would lose that feeling that each country has of its own football, its own players and its own league.’
There is a clear identity to atletico and it comes from simeone, whom Cerezo brought back as coach in december 2011, six years after he left as double-winning player and captain.
atletico Madrid had changed managers 52 times in the previous 25 years. Four and a half years later simeone is the longest-serving manager in spain.
How much longer can it last? ‘There is no expiry date,’ says Cerezo. ‘ He signed for another five years last summer and if both sides are happy — and I think they are — there is no need to think the situation is going to change.
‘When this contract ends we will ask him to renew and I think he will.
‘ He was a great player for us. When the team were losing he would pick up the ball in the middle of the pitch, drive forward and get everyone out of their seat. Football is his life and his passion.’
In that long list of simeone’s predecessors is Claudio ranieri, now on the verge of ‘doing an atletico’ with Leicester by winning the league against richer opponents.
‘ranieri came to us from Valencia when I was vice-president here in 1999,’ recalls Cerezo (above). ‘He was unlucky because he coincided with an institutional crisis at the club. But his success in England doesn’t surprise me as he was the one who first lifted Chelsea up. It is important that a more or less modest club that has won almost noth- ing has a chance to win the Premier League. The magic of football should be in its uncertainty.’
Leicester and atletico Madrid are not brothers in arms in everything. There is no Thai billionaire behind the spanish club and as far as Cerezo is concerned there never should be. ‘In the last few years interest from foreign investors has grown and we have a Chinese partner who owns 20 per cent of the club. ‘ That means the partner has a significant share in the club and is well represented but is not the owner. ‘In England it’s different, but I think here bringing in foreign owners who don’t know the idiosyncrasies of each club is not good. It cannot be a good thing that someone is owner of a club without being from that country.
‘I’m not saying the president should go to all the games, but should he have a visible presence at nearly all the matches? I think so.’
The club has, however, embraced third-party ownership in the past. Football Leaks revealed last week that they sold 30 per cent of midfielder Koke’s rights to Quality Football Ire- land in 2013, a company linked in the past to former Manchester United and Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon.
‘Everything that helps the club economically is positive.’ says Cerezo.
does that still stand if it means we have fixtures between two teams whose players are owned by the same investment fund? ‘Players have to work for the club they are at because it’s the club that pays,’ he says.
Third-party ownership has played its part in atletico’s capacity to reinvent itself — Fernando Torres making way for sergio aguero, who made way for radamel Falcao who made way for diego Costa (right). Coming home is a common theme: Torres returned after eight years away, simeone after six, Filipe Luis after just one season. Is Costa next?
‘I think it’s difficult but as far as we are concerned we would love it if he came back here,’ says Cerezo, who still speaks to the Chelsea forward from time to time. ‘It’s the atleti way,’ he adds. ‘We have a magnificent relationship with all ex-coaches and players. I went to see simeone in argentina when he was at river Plate, that is the way it is with Costa.
‘Whether he can come back or not is another thing but the relationship has always been fantastic. He is OK because he is at a good club. I don’t know whether they will be in the Champions League this year.’ They won’t, of course, and that sums up how far atletico have come under simeone — now they are the team at the top table eyeing players from clubs who are not.
Their journey will also take them to a new stadium in two years’ time. No more strolling down Melancholics Way to the Vicente Calderon. ‘People will be more comfortable,’ Cerezo says of the planned 67,000-seat arena with accompanying restaurants, shops and a club museum.
There must be a danger it will also be a more comfortable place for visiting teams. But tomorrow they welcome Barcelona to their home of 50 years, with the one-man managerial cyclone that is simeone blowing his fury up and down the touchline.
TV: Atletico Madrid v Barcelona, tomorrow, 7.45pm. LIVE on BT Sport Europe.