Style clash as Guardiola, Simeone meet in Champions League

Diego Simeone was working in Argentina within the early years of his teaching profession when he requested to attend some coaching classes at Barcelona, led on the time by Pep Guardiola.

Barcelona was the pre-eminent membership in world soccer, revolutionising the sport between 2008-12 with its “tiki-taka” passing model favored by Guardiola and mastered by the likes of Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernández.

It wasn’t for Simeone, although.

“We talked,” Guardiola has recounted, “and he advised me, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t really feel it.’”

Simeone, a combative and hard-working midfielder as a participant, noticed the great thing about soccer another way and, for a lot of, would come to signify the antithesis of Guardiola and his stunning method.

A conflict of kinds quickly took maintain in Spain, when Simeone moved to Europe to turn out to be coach of Atlético Madrid in 2011 — a number of months after Barcelona received the Champions League for the second time and in mesmeric trend at Wembley Stadium.

Greater than a decade later, the 2 coaches stay on the high of the sport, with Simeone nonetheless the embodiment of a rugged and uncompromising Atlético group and Guardiola now trying to show soccer into an artwork kind at Manchester Metropolis.

Metropolis and Atlético go head-to-head within the Champions League quarterfinals on Tuesday — a primary aggressive assembly between the groups, if not the boys main them.

But given Guardiola and Simeone are two of the game’s most storied present coaches, the truth that they’ve solely come up in opposition to one another thrice is as stunning as it’s refreshing.

The latest was within the Champions League in 2016, when Atlético eradicated Guardiola’s extremely fancied Bayern Munich group on away targets after a pair of tightly contested legs within the semifinals. It’s one among Guardiola’s many painful exits within the Champions League since his final title, in 2011.

Manchester Metropolis’s head coach Pep Guardiola sits on the bench earlier than the Premier League soccer match between Burnley and Manchester Metropolis at Turf Moor, in Burnley, England, Saturday, April 2, 2022.

The one different time Guardiola and Simeone confronted one another was in February 2012, a number of months earlier than Guardiola give up Barcelona. The Catalan group received 2-1 within the Spanish league.

One aim was the distinction in all three video games. Anticipate extra of the identical over the following week, even when Metropolis begins out as the favourite.

“They’re going to be very aggressive,” Metropolis midfielder Bernardo Silva stated Monday. “They received’t give us a lot area and it’s going to be very tight. Undoubtedly not an open sport — that’s Atlético’s high quality.”

Certainly, Guardiola has used Atlético’s elimination of Manchester United within the final 16 as a information for what group ought to count on.

“The primary 15-20 minutes in opposition to United, United couldn’t breathe,” Guardiola stated.

And it’s that skill to frustrate that units Atlético aside. Even whether it is achieved by utilizing what’s typically perceived as unsportsmanlike techniques which have infuriated opposition coaches and gamers through the years.

“It’s irritating at occasions,” Liverpool defender Andrew Robertson stated of Atlético in 2020 when his group was eradicated by the Spanish membership, “however it’s not going to alter.”

There was a interval, significantly within the 2020-21 season, when Simeone tried to show Atlético into extra of an attack-minded group, utilizing the qualities of forwards like Luis Suárez and João Félix.

With regards to the crunch, Simeone sometimes returns to his extra harmful and pragmatic sport plan and that’s more likely to be on present at Metropolis’s Etihad Stadium for the primary leg on Tuesday.

As for Guardiola, who’s wedded to his possession-based philosophy, he stated he wasn’t able to “choose” coaches like Simeone who’ve a unique method to the sport. In truth, he thinks there may be a false impression about Atlético’s model.

“They’re extra offensive than folks consider,” Guardiola stated. “He (Simeone) doesn’t wish to take a danger within the build-up however, after, they’ve high quality and so they play rather well within the ultimate third.

“It relies on the place of the ball, the second of the sport. They know precisely easy methods to play in every actual second. Successful, dropping, final minutes, early minutes.“

So what about Atlético’s perceived use of the darkish arts — the time-wasting, the haranguing of referees, the rolling round? Was there an issue, Guardiola was requested, with “successful ugly?“

“What’s ugly? What’s taking part in ugly?” he replied. ”It’s being good.“

Guardiola has been accused of overthinking his tactics within the massive video games and he accepted that when it was put to him on Monday.

Not that it’ll cease him from doing so once more when Simeone and Atlético come to Manchester.

“It’s important to adapt and alter,“ he stated earlier than ending with a smile. “That’s why I like to overthink and create silly techniques in order that after, after I don’t win, I’m punished.”

Yet one more layer to the upcoming double-header between the present English and Spanish champions that needs to be fascinating.

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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80