MY ACCOUNT
Diego Simeone hailed the football that Manchester City produce but promised Atletico Madrid will play where they can hurt Pep Guardiola’s side in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final.
Atleti overcame Manchester United 2-1 on aggregate in their last-16 clash to tee up the first-ever meeting in Europe between the Spanish side and City, who cruised past Sporting in the last round.
However, Simeone and Guardiola are no stranger to one another given they have faced each other three times, with the former eliminating the Spaniard’s Bayern Munich in the 2015-16 Champions League semi-final.
Atletico averaged just 27 per cent possession across the two legs and scored twice from 18 shots, while Bayern netted the same number of goals from 53 attempts, as Simeone’s team progressed on away goals.
Simeone was quick to praise City’s flowing attacking performances, but insisted his side will look to exploit any potential weaknesses in the City line-up on Tuesday.
“What I like most from teams like City is the effort they have to win the ball back and continue to play attacking,” he said at a pre-match news conference. “They’re lovely to watch.
“They continue evolving because they have great players but what wakes me up, the important things are [Raheem] Sterling, [Kevin] De Bruyne, they’re always active, never leave a ball lost. All managers want that.”
He added: “We’ll play where we think we can hurt them, use our characteristics the way we’ve played for years. We play to compete and we’ll see.”
Indeed, the reigning LaLiga champions will become the first side to face both Manchester clubs in the knockout stages of a European competition in a season since Juventus in the 1976-77 UEFA Cup.
Juve progressed from both of those ties before winning the competition that season, but Simeone’s focus remains solely on the Etihad Stadium.
“We all have pressure, I don’t know if pressure is the right word,” he responded when asked if City were favourites to win the Champions League.
“We all have it but no doubt City have extraordinary players and I’m sure they have better players than us.
“All clubs in the last eight want to win the competition. There are great rivals in all knockout games and I hope we can win.
“There are two games to play. City and Bayern are favourites because they have more options in their squads but last year not many expected Chelsea to win; they got better and played a good tournament.”
Guardiola joked he would “overthink” to take a different approach to what Simeone might expect, but Atleti’s coach is uninterested in all of the commotion between the managerial pair facing off again.
“Not at all, City and Atletico have great squads, very competitive with good players, different characteristics,” he said when asked if it was Pep versus Simeone.
“They have a lot of personality. Tomorrow is a game for footballers, we as coaches try and help them and we’ll do the same. I’ll say again, I like watching City play.”
