IAN
HAWKEY
European Football
Aubameyang
hits a hat-trick
Aubameyang joined Barcelona as a
free agent last month after
Arsenal terminated his contractWilshere destined
for Denmark spell
A goal from a set piece amid protests over
some roughhouse jostling in the build-up. A
pared-down counterattack with only two touches
of the ball between their own penalty
area and the back of the opposition
net. A clean sheet. Thus did
Atletico Madrid, 3-0 winners
away to Osasuna, soothe their
crisis of form before the visit
of Manchester United with a
thorough checklist of what
are deemed to be their
traditional virtues.
In times of doubt, it is
helpful when your touchstones
are built in granite. There may be
no other elite club in Europe so
readily identified with a particular set
of fortes as Atletico. Mostly that’s because the
same individual, Diego Simeone, has been
writing the manifesto for so long. At times in the
past five years, the stereotype of formulaic,
defensive Atletico built only to thrive on the
break or by dead-ball expertise has been too
reductive. But when the manager stays the same
for ten years, the clichés stick.
When those touchstones suddenly vanish,
panic spreads. Saturday’s victory relieved, at least
for a few days, the genuine concern within the
club about their 51-year-old head coach’s ability
to resolve problems that seem so out of character
and yet so persistent.
Atletico, the defending Spanish champions, are
struggling to stay in La Liga’s top four. They have
the leakiest defence in the top half of the
division. They scraped out of the group phase of
the Champions League with only two wins, one
clean sheet and three red cards, the last of which
rules Yannick Carrasco out on Wednesday. This
weekend was only the second time in 16 matches
against top-flight or Champions League
opposition that Atletico had not conceded at
least one goal — Osasuna did hit the post at 1-0
— and it came after a midweek loss at home to
bottom-of-the-table Levante.
That might have been deemed a hiccup had
the past two months not been so wild. There
were the four successive Liga defeats in
December, an unprecedented sequence in the
Simeone era and badly timed in that they
ushered in the tenth anniversary of his
transformative appointment as head coach.
The release, last month, of Simeone: One
Game at a Time, an Amazon Prime series,
coincided with the erratic start to his second
decade. While subscribers were streaming
earnest close-ups of Simeone describing how he
cured Atletico’s chronic inferiority complex, and
steadily remade them as “defensively powerful,
and counterpunchers,” each weekend brought
evidence that his trademarked Atletico resilience
had gone AWOL. There was the pinball 3-2
win over Valencia — from two goals down —
immediately before an early lead turned into a
4-2 defeat away to Barcelona. Six days later
came the helter-skelter 4-3 victory of a ten-man
Atletico over Getafe.
The documentary series is a good watch, and
while its six episodes do not reveal much
Simeone wouldn’t want us to know, it does round
up an impressive list of witnesses. Several are
former antagonists: David Beckham, sent off in
the Argentina v England epic at the 1998 World
Cup after an exaggerated fall by Simeone, looks
back benignly at that incendiary moment while
echoing most others about how tough he always
found Simeone. Sergio Ramos, Real Madrid’s
standard-bearer while Simeone was regenerating
the city’s other big club, recalls what it is like to
have the black-suited opposition head coach
shouting personal insults from the touchline
at you.
We also meet the family and are steered, via
his four-year-old daughter, to the softer Simeone.
He recounts, moist-eyed, the way she corrected
him when he told her football “is my life”. “No,”
Valentina replied, “we are your life.” As revealing
is a story from Simeone’s mother, Nilda
González, on hearing rival fans in Argentina
chanting “son of a bitch” at her son near the
beginning of his playing career. “OK,” she says,
confronting the fans, “so he’s a son of a bitch.
But he’ll never go hungry.”
Simeone will never, until his retirement, go
without prestigious offers of work as a manager,
so monumental has been his achievement at
Atletico, whom he played for either side of their
chastening relegation to Spain’s second division
in 2000. As head coach, he would take them to a
first Liga title for 18 seasons. Seven years on, he
repeated the trick.
Add his two Champions League finals and
a pair of Europa League trophies and you
appreciate why Pep Guardiola compares
Simeone’s legacy and influence at Atletico to
that of Johan Cruyff at Barcelona.
More pertinently, as Atletico prepare for a first
meeting with United since the early 1990s, it is
hard not to think of his equivalent — in terms of
the enduring reign and the concentration ofauthority in one figure — in modern English
football. If any Atletico executive wants advice
on how not to wean a club away from the
greatest coach in their history, they should ask
the institution Sir Alex Ferguson managed for
27 years and study the low yield of trophies
gained by the seven different men who have sat
in Ferguson’s old seat since he retired.
After the victory against Osasuna, featuring a
spectacular goal on the counterattack from Luis
Suárez, Atletico’s players stressed the “unity” of
their dressing room. Word is that the erratic
recent form and the flawed defensive record have
opened up divisions in the boardroom and within
the squad.
Suárez lost his cool with Simeone on being
substituted in the defeat by Seville just before
Christmas and there was sympathy from fellow
players for Daniel Wass, a new signing, when
Simeone pulled the Denmark full back to his feet
and barked at him to play on when he was being
attended to by medical staff during the loss
against Barcelona this month. Wass, it turns
out, had ruptured a knee ligament, an injury
requiring at least a month of recuperation, and
could barely stand.
Simeone was not overly apologetic for that
misjudgment. “I did what I have been doing for
ten years,” he said. For ten years he has usually
known how to coax his players into going the
extra mile.Simeone era at Atletico is starting
to creak – can United finish it off?
Simeone has been in charge for a decade at Atletico and led them to two La Liga titles but needed a
Suárez strike, inset, on Saturday to keep them in the hunt for the top four after a dreadful run of formDIEGO’S DECADE TO SAVOURSeason positionLeague Other trophies/notable achievements11-12 5 Europa League
winners
12-13 3 Copa del Rey winners13-14 1Champions League
runners-up
14-15 3
15-16 3 Champions League runners-up
16-17 3
17-18 2 Europa League winners
18-19 2
19-20 4
20-21 1
21-22 4QUALITY SPORT IMAGES/GETTY IMAGESEUROPEAN DIGEST
DENMARK Jack Wilshere has
agreed to sign for Aarhus
Gymnastikforening in the Danish
Superliga (Gary Jacob writes). The
midfielder had been training with
Arsenal since October and has agreed
a six-month contract in an effort to
resurrect his playing career. Wilshere,
30, has been without a club since he
left Bournemouth nine months ago.
He trained with Serie B’s Como at
the start of the season but was unable
to sign for them because he is a non-
EU player. Mikel Arteta, the Arsenal
manager, ruled out signing Wilshere
despite his small squad. According to
Danish media, Wilshere has joined
until the end of the season, with the
option of a further year.SPAIN The former Arsenal
striker Pierre-Emerick
Aubameyang got off the mark for his
new club Barcelona in style by
scoring a hat-trick in a 4-1 win away
to Valencia that took his side into the
top four in La Liga.
Aubameyang, who was making his
first league start for Barcelona since
his contract was terminated by
Arsenal last month, opened the
scoring at the Mestalla Stadium in the
23rd minute with a powerful finish
into the roof of the net.
Frenkie de Jong made it 2-0 before
Aubameyang tapped in from close
range for his second goal to give
Barcelona a three-goal cushion at
half-time. Carlos Soler pulled oneback for the home side with a diving
header before Aubameyang
completed his hat-trick in rather
fortuitous fashion when Pedri’s
powerful goalbound shot flicked off
the striker’s back and flew past Giorgi
Mamardashvili, the Valencia
goalkeeper.
Aubameyang’s treble meant that
the 32-year-old became the first
player in the 21st century to score a
hat-trick in France’s Ligue 1, the
German Bundesliga, the Premier
League and La Liga.
Sergio Busquets, the Barcelona
captain, said of his new team-mate:
“He is a great player that arrived
hungry because he was not getting
many opportunities at his last club. It
is a luxury having him in our team.”
The victory leaves Barcelona in the
fourth and final Champions League
qualification spot, but still 15 points
adrift of the leaders, Real Madrid.*