Simeone is natural heir to Mourinho’s Chelsea throne
JOSE MOURINHO could be forgiven for beginning to view Diego Simeone as his nemesis. A hungry, saturnine, successful, driven young thruster breathing down his neck — not unlike Mourinho himself was when he arrived in London in 2004.
‘El Cholo’ robbed the Special ‘Once’ of the Copa Del Rey in Mourinho’s last game as Real Madrid manager, at the Bernabéu no less, condemning him to the meagre return of the Spanish Super Cup from (yes, you guessed it) his third season at Los Blancos.
Mourinho described that final year in Spain as ‘a failure … the worst of my career’. A phrase to which he has had to return to recently.
Only 11 months later, in Spring 2014, it was Simeone’s buccaneering Atletico who thumped Jose’s Chelsea 3-1 at Stamford Bridge in the Champions League semi-final.
Only his second-ever home defeat at that stage of the trophy he covets for himself and for the Blues.
Now, news stories persist that should jaunty Jose stray much further out onto that plank to which his results and behaviour have condemned him, and topple into the sea, Roman Abramovich is convinced Simeone should be the next master-and-commander on the Bridge.
Would the presence at Stamford Bridge of Atletico’s two strikers from that 2013 Copa Final victory plus their man of the match, Thibaut Courtois, make the idea of ‘El Cholo’ one day taking over more, or less, tempting to the Russian owner? Have a guess.
Simeone, coincidentally, also got ahead of Mourinho in the bookpublishing game.
The Chelsea manager’s new career-retrospective will do well if it competes with, or betters, the clear, practical, step-by-step coaching information which forms the Argentinian’s 2014 ‘One game at a time’ effort.
In it the Buenos Aires-born football-fanatic, who won over 100 caps for his country, and practised his nemesis-status on David Beckham during one of them, talks of how he saved his ‘perfect’ game for that storming of the Chelsea citadel where he evidently impressed Abramovich so much.
Simeone admits: ‘The semi-final matches against Chelsea made me extremely happy. To be able to transmit a tactical idea to your players and then see it deployed perfectly on the pitch is a fantastic feeling.
‘The first leg had been a chess match and our revenge in London was one of the games which was perfection in that great season.
‘As a leader of players, one of the most complicated things is to get your footballers to live, feel and drive the game exactly the same as you have in the tactical preparation.
‘Once you’re a coach, you can’t be one of the lads, pretend that you’re going to be out there on the pitch. You do your work and then hand over to them.
‘But this was one of those very rare occasions when my staff and I felt wholly involved with the squad from the beginning of the preparation, throughout the work of the 90 minutes and then during the celebrations.
‘A moment where you feel ‘Bam!’ — that was the perfect performance from each and every one of us!’
Whichever way Mourinho now deals with the most consistently rocky and underwhelming part of his career, on his best form he patently retains the capacity, and the squad, to do something special before next June.
Nevertheless, in case his problems gather momentum, he can be thankful that not only is Simeone firmly, emotionally and psychologically committed to Spain’s 2014 champions it would take a cataclysmic series of events to lever him out before the end of the season. At the very earliest.
However, the more you examine Simeone’s various football dicta, as Abramovich’s planning lieutenants surely will, the more it appears that the 45-year-old’s philosophy, never mind his skill, intensity and trophy success make it inevitable he’ll be attractive to Chelsea in the future.
While Mourinho is still causing his club to ‘put out fires’, in the archetypical style which once led Txiki Begiristain, then at Barcelona, to admire the Portuguese’ ability but to warn that he’d drain the club’s spirit and resources with his insistence on fighting the world, Simeone sees things differently.
The Argentinian, without for one second referring specifically to the current Chelsea situation, believes that: ‘In order to manage a group well, you actually need to talk less, not more. Players need their coach to have a balanced approach.
‘My dream is to leave my mark on a club, not simply in terms of trophies but in how I transform the players and the style of play.’
But in his 2014 management technique’s book there are also words of encouragement to the Special ‘Once’ — even to spark his total agreement.
Simeone’s philosophy is that: ‘Humankind always rises to the challenge.
‘It’s in moments of difficulty that we shine the most. It is much easier to make demands of people when things are going badly than when they’re going well.’
In the meantime, Simeone faces another Premier League stalwart this afternoon when he takes Atletico, whose form has been surprisingly irregular these last few weeks, to San Sebastian.
David Moyes needs goals, fluency of performance and, above all, points for his Real Sociedad team Stories about these next few matches starting to be a referendum on his tenure have filtered out in the Basque Country.
Last year’s defeat for the then reigning champions in this fixture came via La Real’s second coach of the year, Asier Santana, following which the Scot took charge.
Moyes could do himself, and the Mourinho camp, a significant favour by repeating that result to relieve the pressure on the Chelsea boss.
The semi-final matches against Chelsea made me extremely happy... it was a fantastic feeling