Giuliano Simeone follows in father’s footsteps to his Atlético destiny | Atlético Madrid
TOt the start of the ultimate coaching session earlier than their largest sport in a decade, Atlético Madrid’s gamers lined up by the middle circle on the Metropolitano and waited for his or her coach to come. Diego Simeone arrived and ran by the center of them, from Juan Musso and Jan Oblak at one finish to Antoine Griezmann and Ademola Lookman on the different. As he handed, head down, they cheered and hit him – if not take away as arduous as they do when it is a participant’s flip. Gauntlet run, applause echoed around the empty stadium. Happy birthday, mister.
Simeone turned 56 on Tuesday. He has spent nearly 20 of these right here: first because the captain who received the double, then the coach who lifted Atlético’s next league title, 18 years onand now leads them into their fourth and their seventh European Cup semi-final, 9 years because the final. What do you get the person who has all of it? “Wow! You can’t imagine how good it is to be in the four best teams in Europe,” he stated after the quarter-final; “I have no birthday wish,” he stated earlier than this semi-final, “just pure gratitude to be able to be with my three sons on my birthday, with my two daughters, my mum, my wife, my lifelong friends.”
One of the sons was hidden in the gang someplace, hitting him. The day that Simeone bade farewell to the Vicente Calderón as a participant in December 2004, he carried his youngest son, two-year-old Giuliano, in his arms. The days earlier than he got here again to Madrid as coach in December 2011, he stopped in a restaurant in Mar del Plata and, over a croissant and a glass of milk, requested Giuliano, then eight, what he thought. “You’re going to coach [Radamel] Falcao?!” the child replied, pleasure giving method to actuality. “But…if it goes well, you won’t come back.”
It did and he did not, however that was all proper. Fourteen years later, Giuliano’s dad continues to be there – no supervisor in Spanish historical past has lasted longer – and now so is he. Born in Italy in December 2002, Giuliano grew up in Argentina with his elder brothers, Giovanni and Gianluca, however they visited usually and their dad visited them too. They would eat “together” by way of an iPad on matchday mornings. Football was their factor, after all, bound by a shared passion. Glasses could be moved across the desk in formation and they’d discover bits of paper all around the home, Gio recalled: tactical scribblings their dad did.
During celebrations after Atlético’s 2012 Europa League title, Simeone Sr was caught on digital camera excitedly speaking on the telephone: “And did you see Falcao’s goal?!” On the opposite finish was Giuliano. The evening Atlético won the Copa del Rey in 2013it was a faculty evening, too late, however the brothers went by the standard routine at dwelling, scarves draped across the room. When Atlético received the derby in January 2015, a tiny ballboy in a white bib and lengthy hair got here racing alongside the touchline – one thing he was going to be excellent at – and leaped into the coach’s arms. That was Giuliano too.
As a ballboy he was invariably by the bench and, sure, there have been instances his dad advised him to decelerate a bit in the event that they had been successful. He would go to coaching at Cerro del Espino in Majadahonda close to the household dwelling and have a kickabout. “It was crazy seeing the players up close,” he has stated. “I always thought: ‘Imagine being out there; that would be mad.’” After Falcaohis idol became Antoine Griezmann.
Competition got here nearer to dwelling. “They would kick me, throw me to the floor, and if I cried, I couldn’t play with them any more; I learned to be tougher,” Giuliano stated of taking part in with his brothers. Gianluca and Gio had been good, turning into professionals like their dad, they usually suspected Giuliano could be good too. Just possibly not this good. He was 16 when he left River Plate’s academy and crossed the Atlantic to be a part of Atlético’s youth system, dwelling with his dad, watching him pore over formations each morning. When he turned 18, although, Simeone Sr kicked him out; it was time to be a person. Now, his dad is his supervisor and his hero is his teammate.
Which may make it sound simple, however it hasn’t been – in half exactly as a result of it’d sound simple. In a latest interview with Jorge Valdano, Giuliano admitted: “At times, it can feel strange to me, wondering what others might think.” When Valdano joked that the very best factor is, when your teammates communicate badly of the supervisor, communicate even worse. The reply got here again shortly: “No doubt!” Giuliano admitted that he had affected him when he was youthful, telling Cadena Ser: “When I was 12 people said I was playing because I was my father’s son. I try to isolate myself from [that]. “I know I won’t be gifted anything.”
Remove the opposite. Simeone Sr once said that there was no way he would sign his son because of the baggage it would bring: the suspicion, the pressure. “I don’t want to say never, but…” he said. “It could be very troublesome to have a son in the dressing room. Very troublesome for him, for the connection, for everybody.”
But he said that about Gio not Giuliano, and Atlético didn’t signs the latter nor really plan for father and son to coincide. He was just another kid from the academy, trying to prove himself.
Having to do more to prove himself, in fact. Loaned out to Zaragoza first and Alavés next, Giuliano broke an ankle in 2023. His dad immediately went to his bedside, but the doubts about where his career went next were not limited to the injury, which he overcame with the determination that comes with the name. There was, it appeared, a reluctance in Simeone to open a pathway for his son. Simeone Jr, though, would end up opening it himself, as insistently and relentlessly as his old man was. Smashing down the door, he made it impossible for anyone to ignore him. Even his dad.
Giuliano used to be a center-forward but his grandfather – Simeone’s father – said the wing would make him, and so it was: tearing up the touchline, veins in his head about to blow. “That Simeone, man… bloody hell,” Alavés’s then-coach, Luis García, said. “He runs for 90 minutes with out stopping. He’s a ache. He’s received a really excessive stage. He makes one thing out of nothing at any second.”
“I see a player, not a son,” Simeone says. However proud he has felt he has been extremely careful not to talk effusively about his son even when he has done so for other players – before facing Barcelona he publicly told Griezmann: “I love you” – or even acknowledge him.
When Gianluca was at Rayo Majadahonda, who played home games at Atlético’s training ground, they would turn up separately, sit separately and leave separately. “Giuliano has a superb relationship with his teammates; that is the factor I’m happiest about in our father-son journey,” Simeone stated.
He would have to earn that, his place too. When Giuliano came back from loan, I have started one of the opening 11 games. But when given a chance – basically because the coach had little other choice – he grabbed it and never let go, everything better with him. No doubts now, just a player worth every minute he gets and every minute he gives. And boy does he give.
Giuliano has a tattoo of the date he made his Atlético debut. They are the “team of my life”, he says and there will be little question about that both, a legacy from his father, one thing else shared, sure collectively from the start. Watch them and also you see it: the identical character, the identical competitiveness, on both facet of the touchline. Go to the membership store, ask for a No 20 shirt and it comes with “Giuliano” on the again, not “Simeone”. But that is his dad, Tuesday was his birthday, and he has all the pieces he would want for. “I’m not in a position to ask for absolutely anything, just to be grateful,” he stated.
