• This season we might find out if Diego Simeone is not just a very good manager, but a great one.
• Atletico have spent £218m this summer. That’s £113m on Joao Felix from Benfica, £27m on Marcos Llorente from Real Madrid, £22.5m on Mario Hermoso from Espanyol, £18m on Felipe Augusto from Porto, £18m on Renan Lodi from Athletico Paranaense, and £20m on Kieran Trippier from Tottenham.
Image: /REUTERS
Good managers build winning teams. Great managers build winning teams, then dismantle them and rebuild them again, and again.
This season we might find out if Diego Simeone is not just a very good manager, but a great one. If Friday’s 7-3 demolition job over rivals Real is an early indicator, the future looks bright indeed.
There have been big changes before at Atletico: Sergio Aguero replaced by Radamel Falcao, Thibaut Coutois replaced by Jan Oblak, but never a generation of players coming to the end at the same time as has happened over the last two years.
Antoine Griezmann has gone from the attack, three-quarters of the back four have gone, and the midfielder who last season replaced club legend Gabi — Rodri — has also gone.
Atletico have spent £218m this summer. That’s £113m on Joao Felix from Benfica, £27m on Marcos Llorente from Real Madrid, £22.5m on Mario Hermoso from Espanyol, £18m on Felipe Augusto from Porto, £18m on Renan Lodi from Athletico Paranaense, and £20m on Kieran Trippier from Tottenham.
Incredibly they have still made a profit with an estimated £280m made primarily from sales of Griezmann to Barcelona for £108m, Lucas Hernandez to Bayern for £72m, and Rodri to Manchester City for £63m.
They have lost three very good players with those sales but the hope is that 19-year-old Felix will light up La Liga, that Real Madrid will rue the day they allowed Llorente and Hermoso — who they had a buy-back clause option on from Espanyol — to slip away. Lodi has already been dubbed the new Marcelo and the hope is that Trippier, the new No 23, will bend it like Beckham used to, as well as wearing the same number shirt as the former Real Madrid and England captain used to.
Simeone had his first crack at rebuilding last season with the arrival of Thomas Lemar from Monaco; the huge financial commitment to keeping Griezmann; and the signing of Rodri from Villarreal. It did not go well.
Lemar was massively disappointing, Rodri did well but did not much like being told to be so direct, so early whenever in possession and did not take much persuading to leave Simeone for Pep Guardiola. And Griezmann realised by March time – when Atletico are convinced he started talking to Barcelona behind their backs — that he had made a mistake by staying.
So this is ‘Rebuild take-two’. Simeone is hoping Lemar’s second season is better than his first; that Morata’s first full campaign will be a success; that Felix will beef-up and last the pace of what will be a gruelling campaign, and that Lodi and Trippier will replace two of the unsung heroes in the greatest period in Atletico Madrid’s history – the full-backs Juanfran and Filipe Luis.
The idea that Trippier’s natural game doesn’t suit Simeone’s philosophy forgets that the Argentine coach almost always plays without wingers – the width must come from the full-backs, who need to be the fittest players in the team because they also need to be back in place to form part of a back-four that used to be famed for its meanness but lost some of it’s bite and snarl last season. Getting all the pieces to fit together is not going to be easy. The work has already started. Atletico Madrid players always have a slightly different pre-season to their Madrid neighbours. While Real Madrid players are whisked off to Asia or North America no sooner have they done their pre-season medical checks, the Atletico players are taken about 50 miles north of the Spanish capital to a boot camp where they are run into the ground by famed fitness coach Oscar Ortega.
The place is called Los Angeles de San Rafael but this is no LA. It’s an hour’s drive from the club’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium, there are plenty of hills for Ortega to chase them up and down, and it’s currently about 30 degrees during most of the day.
On Thursday afternoon Trippier was put through one of his first Simeone training sessions with the manager’s right-hand man Mono Burgos directing him from the touchline in his best English: ‘Go’, ‘calm’ and ‘very good’ the three favoured phrases of the assistant coach. Simeone had his team lined-up in a 4-4-2 diamond for this session with new signing Joao Felix behind the front two. Time will tell if he stays that bold or ends up playing his new superstar off a lone front man, so making room for a second central midfielder.
He has options. Although he had options last season too and it seemed to trap him in a maze of constant change with the team occasionally unrecognisable from one game to the next.
It now remains to be seen if there will be more new recruits. There is an interest in James Rodriguez who has come back to Real Madrid after his two-year loan spell at Bayern Munich ended with them not taking up the offer of buying him for around £36m.
He is surplus to requirements at Real Madrid but if Atletico are to sign him then they must first sell. Angel Correa and Nikola Kalinic are both on the market and midfielder Vitolo could also move on. Diego Costa always looks like one row away from a move to China but for now he seems to be staying and could be key in the adaptation of fellow Portuguese speaker Felix.
If Correa and Kalinic do leave and Rodriguez does arrive it will have been a spectacular summer. Marca calculated on Friday that since Simeone took over in 2012 the club’s net spend is only £2.2m. He’s been spectacular for the finances. He’s been good for the team’s fortunes too but this season is a big test. Most of the players that won La Liga in 2014 and reached two European Cup finals are gone. This squad looks very good on paper; he needs to make it work on the pitch.