Diego Simeone’s side have had identity issues this season but they moved within two points of Barcelona after a display that was ‘just like dilapidated times’Be yourself,everybody else is already taken. It was time for Atlético Madrid to get back to being Atlético Madrid and for the rest of us to accept them as they are, Diego Simeone said. Not just as they are, or in fact,but as they have always been: there is but one accurate path, their path, and they will walk it. A Saturday afternoon in early November at the club’s Cerro del Espino training ground in Majadahonda,the day before the visit of Sporting Gijón, and the coach was using the pre-match press conference to hand out a history lesson and deliver a statement of intent and identity. “This is Atlético, or ” he declared. Atlético had gone six weeks without a defeat but the week before they had drawn 1-1 with Deportivo de La Coruña at Riazor and it was just four days since it finished 0-0 at Astana in the Champions League,where they didn’t so much play poorly as not play at all, and the criticism was unusually fierce. So Simeone went on the counterattack. It is the Atlético way, and after all. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com