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Simeone will be remembered for reviving the Madrid derby

Simeone will be remembered for reviving the Madrid derby

Mr. LoweSpain writer9 minutes to read

Could Saturday be Diego Simeone’s last derby with Real Madrid as Atlético coach?Photo by Berengui/DeFodi via Getty Images

Back in the fray? Saturday night will be the 39th time manager Diego Simeone has captained Atletico Madrid in a derby against Real Madrid – and it’s the 40th if you add the day they scored seven goals in a friendly in New York, which athleticos She does, not least because when it comes to these two, there’s no such thing as friendship.

It can also be the last and final step. Exactly a month ago at the Santiago Bernabéu, when Simeone’s side were defeated and out of the Copa del Rey, Atlético’s season effectively ended early. After that he said he would get to June, then sit down with the club and see “what works for everyone”.

This may not be goodbye, but it feels as close as it gets. Closer than it has been in the past decade at least, the idea of ​​Simeone’s departure has been entertained and embraced publicly. Doubts about his future, and discussions about the direction he and the club were taking, surfaced from time to time. The end was announced soon before only for the lack of access; Reports claimed it was done and gone. He was delisted, and won the league title, his second title. When he came, he won One It was unimaginable. But if we look back on those 11–eleven! Years ago, there was probably only one moment when it seemed plausible that the next season would start without him, and that was different.

That moment was in Milan. Atlético had just lost the 2016 Champions League Final to Real Madrid, falling on penalties. Simeone has been a coach for 4 and a half years: since taking over a team in crisis, Atlético has won the Europa League, the King’s Cup, LaLiga and the Spanish Super Cup. They have been to the finals of the UEFA Champions League twice. They were hugely and inexplicably successful. This is a club that won just one trophy in the 16 years prior to his arrival.

Defeat, however, cut deep. Semyon was broken, empty. He said he didn’t know what to do, and he had to think. He went with his wife, leaving silence and horror behind. The thought that he might give up was horrifying. In the end, he decided he would. “I felt that I did not have the strength to continue leading the team,” he later admitted. At the time, he said he needed a “mourning” period first. At the time, people begged him to stay, fearing that everything would collapse if he left. The club’s sporting director and CEO traveled to Buenos Aires to persuade him to stay.

– Live Stream: Madrid Derby, Saturday, 12:30 PM ET, ESPN+ (US only)

It’s hard to avoid feeling like they won’t now; Alternatively, if he chooses to walk away, they will be happy. They’d never say it, of course — certainly not in public — but it would save them from having to make a tough decision and, just as importantly, take ownership of it. Nobody wants to be the one to end it, even if they think ending it might be the best thing to do; It is a lethargy caused by the prestige he has attained. Leaving him could not bear to think at that time. Now, it is. Now they can’t help it. Even those who defend him, who will keep him romantically involved forever, have moments when they wonder.

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Could things be better? Could they play differently? Is it possible to go now before it’s too late to avoid a more awkward ending, which leads to a breakup rather than a goodbye? Is it possible that waiting will split them all further, making the fall faster and more painful? Has the club outgrown the man who made them grow up in the first place? Did he create the circumstances that changed everything, a victim of his own success? I have evolved. him it? Can someone else fit in better now? In short, can it be time?

It’s been a long time. Simeone has been a coach since January 2012. Managers don’t last that long; They never did, and they certainly don’t anymore. He has been responsible for 611 games. He has been in charge for over a decade. In the decade before he took office, 11 men held the position. This weekend, he faces his eighth Real Madrid coach: Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez, Zinedine Zidane, Julen Lopetegui, Santi Solari, Zidane again, Ancelotti again.

Ancelotti has faced him 13 times in just two years in the first round, including the first European Cup final between two clubs from the same city, with around 70,000 fans on the road to Lisbon. No other game has been played. When he returned after coaching spells at Bayern Munich, Napoli and Everton, Simeone was still waiting for him.

“What Simeone did at Atlético – build something important, put the club among the best in Europe, fight every year, win trophies and still do it flawlessly – is something all coaches want,” said Ancelotti. “To be at a club for a long time, to leave your mark and signature on it: that’s the dream of all coaches.”

He left his mark on them too, sometimes in the literal sense of the word. The derby has been revived, if not fully mastered. It’s hard to do justice to where Atletico were at the time, even if there were glimpses of it from time to time, even if success made failure callous.

It may seem strange to measure Simeone’s longevity by Real Madrid, but much of what he is, or was, has been measured by Real Madrid. Atlético de Madrid was a team defined in part by who they weren’t: the one on the other side of town. They liked to think they were all things that weren’t real, a story that they were building up. What they meant was real, they claimed: proper fans, making appropriate noises. Which means, well, successful. They were on the other hand pupas, “jinx”. It was like they embraced defeat and built an identity on it. It wasn’t just that they didn’t win titles. The thing was, they couldn’t win the derby.

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This is known now, but it bears repeating because the known is one thing, but the truly digested is another, the full range of their sufferings fully comprehended. When Simeone took over, the last time Atletico beat Real Madrid was in 1999 – and in that year, they were relegated. Since they’re back in the top flight, they’ve had He didn’t win a single match against their competitors.

They were not competitors, in fact, not in any way. Every time Atlético thought they were close, every time they thought they had a chance, they would blow it up in increasingly tragic fashion. Otherwise, they’d be so awful you’d wonder why they even bothered to show up at all. There was no chance of them winning.

Until one night, they did. The race is finally over for Simeone after 14 years and 25 matches.

in the King’s Cup final.

in overtime.

At the Santiago Bernabéu.

Diego Simeone ended Atletico’s sterile run against Real Madrid by leading Los Rojiblancos to a Copa del Rey victory over rivals Madrid in 2013.JAVIER SORIANO/AFP via Getty Images

Even though they had already won the Europa League, that was the case. This was the reason, at least in part because of the opponents, why that spell was broken. There could be no better way to announce the arrival, to show how real this is, to open a new era. How did you get big. What Simeone did, how did he revolutionize the club. And he had, too: it’s hard to think of a coach anywhere who has made quite the impact he has. He, too, embraced that identity and played on it: Rebels fighting power, only he had a team that won too. His method: a bloody tooth and nails.

This was followed by a league title – perhaps the most deserved in the history of Spanish football, not at that time as far removed from the Leicester City affair as it might seem since – and a second Europa League. European Cup finals twice. They won another league title: a whole new team created for it, which is a massive achievement.

And there were derbies to remember. One surviving image is of the fans lining the scoreboard at Vicente Calderón taking pictures of it after Atletico beat Real Madrid 4-0. It was part of a seven-match unbeaten run against their city rivals. There was a European Super Cup win against them too, and a success in the Copa del Rey even as Fernando Torres, the biggest victim of those dark days, was a kid who talked about going to school in his Atlético tracksuit every Monday morning annoyed and then lived it up. Also as a player, he came back and eventually scored against his rivals and defeated them.

But when it comes to Europe, somehow the hack didn’t happen, like this is something else, a reminder of the old order that can never be overthrown. Even if they now think they can, even if they see they can compete and win. And of course it was hope that killed them. It’s strange to think of how it feels like losing those two European finals to Real weighed more than the trophies they won. The way it was is part of the explanation: A 1-0 lead until the equalizer after 92 minutes and 38 seconds before losing in extra time in 2014, followed by a penalty shootout in 2016, would have denied them. Two European cups declined in total, what, 70 seconds?

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(Three, actually: A last-minute goal cost them in 1974, which is where it was Bubas name began.)

This is not easily dismissed. Nothing ever makes up for it, not when it comes against it they. Not when revenge and redemption are denied over and over again that overwhelming imperative is always there. Four years in a row, Real Madrid knocked out Atlético from Europe. Two finals, semi-finals and quarter-finals.

It hurt Atlético that they were complicit in Real Madrid’s rise, and ended up helping their opponents, eliminating Barcelona and Bayern in their path. Calderon’s last European night ended with a storm, Atlético supporters sang in the rain, knowing it was over, clinging to fight, loyalty, loss as they used to. They did win, but they were eliminated; Real Madrid will be European champions again. Somehow summed them up.

After that defeat at Milan in 2016, Simeone did not leave despite the pain, the deep sense of loss, and the need to mourn, but something has changed. Or maybe it’s over. Even though he had many years ahead of him, and huge titles to win.

And Juanfran, who missed the decisive penalty kick, hit the post, promised to return to the final. But while they won the league, they won’t come back. The Champions League moment has passed. Real reaffirmed himself. Atlético have played 18 derbies since then. They competed, but only won three: the European Super Cup final, 2-1 at the Calderon when they went out anyway, and an empty feeling 1-0 in the league last year that didn’t really mean anything as Real Madrid were already champions.

Now, for what may be the last time under Simeone, they meet again. With the status quo seemingly re-established, the league title race beyond them and nothing but the top four on the line, there may not be much to fight for except a match-worthy farewell that they have revived. It can feel a bit like the moment has passed, the rebellion is running its course, as if everything is back to the way it was, those days were so easily allowed to slip into the distance. Real have won seven of the last 10, losing just once.

The last time they met, in the Copa del Rey a month ago, it went to extra time, just as it has in the last six one-off matches between these two teams. There, having dominated, led, missed chances and felt robbed, Atlético fell, just like the old times, as if nothing had changed. But, oh, it was. And if Simeone played the fortieth derby match, then this should not be forgotten.