We have an in-depth analysis of why Diego Simeone should leave Atletico Madrid by the end of this season. He needs to move on.
Many Atletico Madrid supporters from the old school were fuming last night against Diego Simeone. Contrary to other times in which the Colchoneros don’t give up, they seemed defeated from the first minute against Chelsea. ‘Cholo’ tends to imprint a fighting spirit in all his players but things didn’t work as planned this time around. This team started the season as one of the strongest football clubs in Europe, many had them as a top title contender.
But somewhere along the way this season, something completely changed. This is where the main problem with Simeone’s philosophy comes into play. Although Atletico Madrid was a modest club in previous years, they’ve grown exponentially under Diego Simeone. They even got to the point where they paid €126 million for a single player (Joao Felix). In previous decades, this was simply outside of the realm of possibility for the Colchoneros.
Simeone is stuck with his ideas.
One would think that after a period of time growing as a club, their playing philosophy might change. However, Simeone chooses to maintain the same “modest” way of looking at his own club. He doesn’t realize that the players he has want to play more offensive football and truly dominate the landscape. Yesterday was the perfect example of a manager who is afraid of going after the result in the Champions League.
Chelsea has been overly defensive under Thomas Tuchel, which was the perfect time for his team to go out on the attack. What did ‘Cholo’ do? He took Luis Suarez off the pitch and proposed a more defensive tactical approach as the team was losing. We simply fail to understand the reasoning behind this manager’s decisions, especially as they kept losing the game. It might be time for Atletico to start looking at new managers to take the squad in a different direction.