The situation
Every year that passes, the love story between Cholo Simeone and Atlético de Madrid acquires a more and more legendary aroma. In a football lacking in patience, the man from Buenos Aires is about to start his twelfth season as Atletico coach and, since Stéphane Moulin left Angers a year ago (he had managed the French team since the summer of 2011), he is the coach who more courses has been in the same club from among the 5 major leagues (Premier League, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Serie A and La Liga). Something that, surely, neither Simeone himself nor the athletic fans could imagine when Cholo landed in Madrid on December 23, 2011. He was signed to get the team out of the sports crisis in which he was with Gregorio Manzano at the top and, since then, except for the first (in which he only had time to climb to 5th position) there has not been a year that Cholo has finished without leaving Atlético among the top three in La Liga . The ‘rojiblanco’ team suddenly acquired a new dimension . And it did so both in Spain, where it went from being the fifth team (in terms of points accumulated in the First Division) to becoming the third (ahead of Valencia and Athletic Club), and in Europe. In his first season, the Argentine made the team champion of the UEFA Europa League and from then on everything has been about putting Atleti on the map.
income boost
And it is that each classification for the mattress team is as important in sports as in economics , since just entering the Champions League brings the institution an income of 15.6 million euros. The pass to the Eighth supposes another 9.6 M; 10.6 the passport for Rooms; 12.5 for the semifinals and 15.6 million for qualifying for the final. Taking into account that Atlético in the last nine years has only fallen in the group stage on one occasion (they ended up winning the Europa League that year), the total entered has exceeded 349 million euros, not counting the 2.8 million that has been pocketed for each victory in the first phase since 2012 and the 930,000 euros for each draw. Given these data, it is not surprising that the rojiblanca sports management continues to trust Cholo. However, it is not something much less common in recent times . Of those historical cycles on the bench that marked figures such as Guy Roux (42 years at Auxerre), Ferguson (27 at United) or Wenger (21 courses as Arsenal coach), Simeone is today the greatest exponent.