Diego Simeone stood on the lines and clapped cynically. The last minutes of injury time were running out for them, and the Manchester City players wasted them through blatant predictions. Cello, who knows this tactic better than anyone else, reacted angrily, enthralling the crowd and trying to make fans understand that his team was being beaten. There was only one small problem – he wasted 45 minutes on his own yesterday.
At times, Atletico Madrid made the English champions look like a small, frightened team. When Cello’s players pressed the pedal, sent a lot of players forward, passed the ball quickly and created chaos, the guest did not really know what to do. City failed to hold the ball at all, moved on to casual clearances, defending the goal with their teeth, and did not try to do anything effective on offense even when Atletico were left in numerical inferiority. The willingness to waste time at all costs was such that Phil Foden, who was hit by a malicious tackle by Felipe off the field, deliberately rolled into it to cause the game to stop – and this led to a great commotion.
It was, without a shadow of a doubt, Manchester City’s weakest half of the season, and Simeone must have felt his plan worked. However, why did this plan involve bunkering and absorbing pressure for the entire first half? Why was it impossible to shift gears already in the opening, and hit the opponent when she did not expect it?
One can certainly understand why Cello chose to shut himself out of his first game in Manchester last week. The possibility of crashing and being defeated in an open game was very tangible, and the repeal of the Foreign Exchange Act – UEFA’s most unfortunate decision – further lowered the motivation to gamble and attack a bit. The clear goal was to squeeze a 0-0 draw, and Atletico were not far from achieving it. , She eventually lost 1-0 from a tremendous goal from Kevin de Bruyne, and it was supposed to cause a substantial change of attitude in the return from the first minute, what’s the circumstances were in her favor.
Fate wished, and the English association placed the season game between City and Liverpool exactly between the games against Atletico. Moreover – it took place on Sunday, while Cello’s team played on Saturday (and lost in Mallorca, but it’s less than a year at the moment). Pep Guardiola’s side were more tired, lined up in an away game in front of a stadium full of enthusiastic fans cheering on Atletico with fire and water, and the Blues’ most important stopper, Ruben Diaz, had not yet fully recovered from injury and sat on the bench mostly on a spectator standard. Besides, the repeal of the Foreign Exchange Act worked reciprocally to Simeone’s credit, and absorption would not have turned into a disaster.
There was no real reason to intentionally shorten the length of time Atletico tried to cross the half and score. There was no justification for throwing an entire half in the bin, giving the ball to Manchester City and risking balls from Jan Obelek’s net. The fact that the English champions did not really employ the Slovenian goalkeeper, and contented himself with a shot by Ilkai Gonduan to stand, should have caused Simeone to give his players a green light to gallop to attack much earlier. But he waited and waited, sticking to the original plan to keep 0-0 until the break, and only then released everything. When he did, it was clear as day that the initial tactics were fundamentally wrong.
For Atletico, Simeone is a kind of God. He is the most important figure in the modern history of the club, as a player and especially as a coach, and his ability to get the most out of a not particularly shiny staff is well known. Still, it is worth appealing, at least occasionally, to this basic premise. Atletico is not sluggish – it is a club that can pay 125 million euros for Joao Felix and 80 million euros for Thomas Lamar, and then turn them into rotation players who sometimes sit at the end of the bench. Its staff is deep and high quality, and another coach would have managed to build from it a more attractive team that is able to further threaten top clubs as well. This is not to say that this character is more suited to Atletico, and certainly does not guarantee that a different approach would also have led to winning championships in 2014 and 2021, but a certain diversity is certainly needed. The attitude that Atletico must always define itself as an underdog in encounters against stronger rivals on paper is detrimental to it.
It was particularly relevant yesterday, when Manchester City’s panic after the break, which even included the inclusion of Fernandinho alongside Rodry in the 78th minute, stressed that much more could have been done in front of it. Guardiola’s players were really exhausted, physically and mentally, after the big drama against Liverpool. It was imperative to attack it and see where it might lead. Based on the reality in the second half, there was a real opportunity here for a wonderful comeback and a victory that would have given Atletico a ticket to the derby against Real Madrid in the semi-finals.
Simeone is often defined as a winner, because he brought quite a few titles to Atletico against all odds, but what exactly is the true meaning of the word “winner”? There is no consensus here, and there may be many interpretations, but one thing is for sure – everyone will agree that Wiener is not necessarily the person who wins the most. Johan Cruyff and the Netherlands, for example, lost in the 1974 World Cup final to West Germany, but no one would dare define them as losers. Consciously, this orange team was a winner, even though she never won anything.
Why? Because it is not the end result that determines, but the spirit. And perhaps the best definition of a winner is the man whose desire to win is stronger than the fear of losing. Wiener is someone who strives to reach the top and is not afraid of falls. A winner is someone who is willing to risk a loss to improve their chances of winning. So yesterday Diego Simeone did not behave like a winner, thus significantly hitting the opportunity to advance to the semi-finals, even though the conditions for it were quite reasonable.
Therefore, when he reacted cynically to the frequent falls of City players, he could only blame himself. On the other hand, City’s cowardice, which has completely lost the ability to play a game wisely after Field Braina was injured and replaced, is in great line for Real Madrid to meet it in the semi-finals. So is the fact that despite clear control of the pitch in the first half, City failed to kick even once into the frame, ending the fight with a lone threat to Obelek. Ederson in particular had to be at his best, especially when he stopped with a phenomenal instinct the experience of Angel Korea during injuries. It was very close to extra time, and based on yesterday’s game City deserved to lose. Atletico just did not deserve to win.