Diego Simeone admits he feels “lucky” to manage Atletico Madrid as Wednesday’s 1-0 win against Bayern Munich was among his “best achievements”.
Yannick Carrasco’s first-half strike ensured Atleti repeated their victory in the first leg of last season’s Champions League semi-final against Bayern, prompting Simeone to sound unrecognisable to the broken man that lamented Los Colchoneros’ final defeat to Real Madrid four months ago to the day.
“I feel lucky to be manager of this club,” the Coach told UEFA’s official website after the game.
“It is a club with passion and a promise to play every game as we want. Today I liked everything. We pressed them well, when we sat back and set up for the counter we did it well.
“When we had to suffer we did. We were intense for the 90 minutes against a very hard side and it is one of the best achievements since I’ve been here at Atletico Madrid.
“The game plan was clear. We tried to close them down from the front, with Saul helping to nullify Ribéry and Alaba, Torres sticking on Alonso and Griezmann on Vidal.
“The goal was a demonstration of how good our counterattack game is and I am very impressed with how the side interpreted the tactical set-up.”
Antoine Griezmann missed a penalty late in the second half, but Simeone assured the Frenchman that he would remain in charge of spot-kicks as he also paid tribute to the “brilliant” Stefan Savic and Diego Godin in central defence and midfield “boss” Koke.
“Maradona, Messi, Platini and Zico have all missed penalties. Griezmann will carry on taking them. We are very happy with his work,” he added.
“He started the counterattack for the goal and he did a thousand things. For me, he is in amongst the best forwards in the world.
“The teamwork today was brilliant. Such intelligence, intensity, winning the ball back and counter attacking.
“Savic and Godin were brilliant. We have four brilliant centre-backs who I think are the best in the world.
“We have been working with Koke for the last two years, moving him more inside. He is looking more natural there and seems to be the boss in there.
“It works well and he enables the team recover the ball much more quickly.”
