Diego Simeone is one of the most fascinating managers in Europe when you consider what he’s achieved with Atletico Madrid.
He’s won La Liga and taken them to Champions League finals, while he’s also managed to deal with the consistent loss of key players and he keeps finding ways to regenerate the squad each year.
It’s never been clear if he’s a legitimate top level manager and Atleti are simply lucky to have him, or if they are just wonderfully suited to each other and you do wonder what he would be like with another club.
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With Atleti he’s not expected to win La Liga or the UCL because they are the underdogs and it’s not reasonable to demand that success, while his team is usually filled with players who punch above their weight and fully buy into his methods.
ESPN have linked him with the managerial role at Chelsea if they finally decide to get rid of Frank Lampard, so it would be interesting to see what he would be like at Stamford Bridge.
These links have come back up since Atleti’s shock defeat to Cornella in the Copa Del Rey and he said this after the game:
“Football is changeable, and you have to be open always to every possibility, I’m really happy here but I have to be open to what the club decides.”
It’s certainly possible to interpret this as him seeing an exit as a genuine possibility but it doesn’t really sound like he wants to leave, while Atleti would be mad to sack him for a cup loss when they also look well placed to win the league.
One of the big problems at Chelsea has always been the suggestions that the players have too much power and there are problems in the dressing room, but Simeone’s arrival would absolutely change that as he won’t stand for any nonsense.
Realistically this looks like a clever attempt from Simeone to remind Atleti exactly how lucky they are to have him and to scare them into imagining life without him, so it’s difficult to see him moving on halfway through the season.
Perhaps that will change in the summer if he wins La Liga and decides there’s not much more he can really achieve with the club, so he could still be a name to keep an eye on if the job opens up at Chelsea.