One of the best things Chelsea could have done over the last five years was hire Diego Simeone. The next best thing they could do is listen and learn from him right now.
If only Chelsea fans weren’t ashamed of the club identity that brought them five Premier League titles and two European cups, there would have been an outcry for the club to hire Diego Simeone last summer. But the only reason the head coach job was vacant was because of said shame, so Chelsea’s best chances to hire Simeone fell further into the past.
Simeone signed a contract extension through 2022 earlier this season, which means Chelsea will go through many more managers before they have another chance to hire the Argentine. Simeone can still provide a valuable service to the club, though, if the Blues and their current coach, in particular, heed his advice on building a team.
Speaking to Goal, Simeone described an approach that should be obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the game. That is to say, listen up, Sarritologists.
"I do not have a style to go to a smaller team and practice my supposed style, I have to adapt to the club that hires me, empower those players and as an employee, make the club grow.That is to be a good coach for me. He who brings a style to a club that can’t carry it out, he is not a good manager, because he is attacking the club that hires him. – Goal.com"
Simeone went on to talk about people who criticize a certain style of play, pointing out how some playing styles are fully immune from criticism. “My question is why? Why?”
Simeone cuts to the bundle of contradictions at the heart of so much fan sentiment, and the mess clubs create when they try to appease it. Fans want coaches to come in and immediately implement a style. If that style does not immediately produce results, the fans excuse the coach by saying he doesn’t have the right players for it. They then demand an overhaul of the players to bring in a squad who can achieve both results and style, not asking if that style is even possible in the league no matter who the players are.
But if a manager comes in and achieves results without style, when the results drop off the manager is fully to blame. In those cases, the players are exonerated from any culpability for the team’s downturn. If the fans point out the players’ shortcomings they are seen as disloyal. If the coach does it he is seen as incompetent, even though in the reverse scenario he was just calling it as he sees it.
Don’t believe me, or think I’m too biased in my thoughts on Chelsea? Take a look at Manchester United, and how much Ole Gunnar Solksjaer is now appreciating what Jose Mourinho had to say earlier this season.
Simeone’s comments tap another thread that surfaced in our Twitter dust-up yesterday. We pointed out how Alvaro Morata is doing better in Simeone’s system, which is supposedly overly-defensive and anti-football, than in Maurizio Sarri’s supposedly free-flowing, offence-oriented system. Several respondents said Morata is better suited for such ugly football as Simeone’s, where the team just shells crosses into the box for a striker like Morata to put a head on without thinking about it. He is simply not cut out for beautiful football a la Maurizio Sarri and all it entails, some others said.
So let me make sure I understand this. Saying a player does better in a system that is suited for him is an effective counter-argument to someone saying players do better in systems that are better suited for them. Hm. Consider me pwned.
Diego Simeone did not shoehorn Alvaro Morata into a pre-determined role. Morata may be Atletico Madrid’s No. 9, but he is not playing “the Diego Costa role.” Atletico plays differently depending on whether Morata or Costa are up front with Antoine Griezmann. They play differently when both Morata and Costa are up front, and Griezmann tucks in behind. And they play differently still if another winger comes up alongside Morata opposite Griezmann.
All those permutations are Simeone trying to organize the right players into the right structure for a given opponent. He does not care about the 4-4-2 / 4-3-3, per se, only how those arrangements and the tactics that go with them will help Atletico Madrid win against the team in front of them.
Whatever Atletico Madrid are doing at any given moment of any given game at any given season depends on the 11 players Simeone puts on the pitch. His style, such as it is, is an emergence from the the XI. The style does not exist independent of the players, nor are the players expected to live up or live down to the style. There is no Simeone-ball.
Chelsea had a distinct long-term identity overlaying a decade and a half of success because their best managers built the game around their players. Those managers were honest about their squads’ shortcomings and limitations, and proceeded to do the best they could. Ironically, foolishly, that level of realism cost them their jobs.
They then traded it all in and ended up with the problem Diego Simeone directly addresses: the coach is only as good as what he can do with the players he has. A coach who persists in one style despite the performances of the individuals and the results of the team under that style strands his team and the fans. They can do nothing but wait for the club to sign Godot, who will surely bring it all together.
Fortunately, Chelsea will run out of patience. Maybe by that time Diego Simeone will be looking for his next challenge.