Half an hour before each match, when his players are out warming up, Diego "El Cholo" Simeone sits alone in the quiet of the dressing room and phones home. He usually makes three calls, one to each of his children in Argentina. The calls are brief, barely a couple of minutes each, and are part of Simeone's ritual: the calm before the storm, a moment's tranquillity and isolation. "For four or five minutes I'm a normal person," he says. And then he hangs up and goes back to being Diego Simeone, Atlético Madrid manager.
Diego Simeone, Atlético Madrid manager, is an irresistible force, a tidal wave that either carries you along or flattens you: determined, energetic, convincing and supremely competitive, he is the manager who has built a team in his own image, at least in part because he was built in theirs. "Atlético Madrid play like Simeone played: tough, focused and tactically perfect," the Real Madrid coach, Carlo Ancelotti, says. The Levante manager, Joaquín Caparrós, admiringly describes Atlético as a "hammer that relentlessly bashes away".
Relentless is one way of putting it. The striker Kiko, a former team-mate, recalls Simeone refusing to let the players have a siesta before one vital game because he simply could not understand how they could sleep. His assistant Oscar Ortega says: "As a player he was already a coach, someone who brought people together, a constant provoker of meetings when there was something he didn't like. He always wanted to transmit the powerful competitiveness he had. He was harder as a player than a coach, incredible with his team-mates. He was demanding and had to win, no discussions. He's still demanding but he's more contemplative, more flexible, more of a compañero, more pedagogical."
Yet Simeone jokes with his squad that there is no escape from him: it is hard to live away from his family but that means he really can be Atlético's manager 24 hours a day. Well, 23 hours, 55 minutes. He has literally nothing better to do, he smiles, but he can also think of nothing better to do either. "I love football and I love my profession," he told the paper AS. Staff say you only have to watch him channel hop: the second a patch of green pops up, he becomes transfixed. He admits that when he does seek refuge in the cinema, footballers appear on the screen.
Players attest to the intensity. In Simeone's words, "effort is non-negotiable". He admits: "It's hard for me to interact with players who don't give themselves completely. The weak don't interest me."
In the restaurant opposite the training ground, where the squad often eat, they could see it in his first week. The Simeone effect. Everything had changed; even the identity of Atlético Madrid. They called them El Pupas, the jinxed one, but not any more: El Cholo has vanquished El Pupas.
When Simeone took two over days before Christmas in 2011, Atlético were 10th in La Liga and had just been knocked out of the cup by Albacete from the regionalised third tier. His new employers were in crisis. Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, the club's CEO, majority shareholder and son of the infamous Jesús Gil, had employed 16 coaches since 1996 and averaged 14 new players a season. From the board to the bench, from the fans to the squad, there was division and confrontation. They were, as the captain put it, "mentally sunk".
By the end of the season, Atlético were fifth, narrowly missing out on a Champions League place. They had lost only five of 22 league games under Simeone and won the Europa League Then in 2012-13 they won the European Super Cup against Chelsea, then qualified for the Champions League and won the Copa del Rey. Then this season they returned to the top of La Liga for the first time in 16 years. They are unbeaten in the Champions League and defeated Milan at San Siro. On Sunday, they have 60 points from 25 games and face their city rivals Real at the Vicente Calderón knowing that victory would take them to the summit again.
Once, victory in the derby would have felt impossible but not any more. When Atlético won the Copa del Rey last season they did so by beating Real Madrid, the rich neighbours in whose shadow they seemed destined to live forever, and at the Santiago Bernabéu. It was the first time Atlético had beaten Real this century. They had lost 10 in a row and not won in 25. When they met at the start of this season, they beat Real again. From no wins in 14 years to two in a row.
Real knocked Atlético out of the Copa del Rey recently but it was not like old times: there was no fatalism, no inevitability, no capitulation. Now Atlético are genuine candidates to be the first team to take the Spanish title off Real Madrid or Barcelona in a decade. Real needed only to turn up in the past; now they know they will have to compete.
"I'm not sure if Simeone is the only person who could have done that but he was the best," the captain, Gabi, says. No one could have brought the club together like he did, uniting disparate strands; no one carried the moral and spiritual authority. No manager had the symbolic power. He was a popular choice and a populist one, too. "We needed someone who would make them work and make the fans believe," the sporting director, José Luis Caminero, admitted to ESPN. And, he might have added, to take the pressure from the board, which had become the focus of supporters' fury.
Simeone was the captain and spiritual leader when Atlético won the double in 1996. Team-mates had been amazed when he said he wanted their title rivals to win on the penultimate week. They just wanted to be champions but he hated the idea of winning the league without playing, without competing. They won and he scored the header against Albacete that clinched the title. It was right. The year 1996 acquired mythical status and Simeone was at the heart of the legend, an idol.
Three years later, however, Atlético were relegated for the first time. Their president described it as "one little year in hell" but soon it was two. Simeone had left in 1997 and returned in 2003 for two more years. He understood the suffering but he was also a link to the success. He identified with them and they with him and they were as desperate for him to come back as manager as he was to return.
On the flight to Madrid from Argentina in December 2011 when the moment had finally arrived, he says the "energy" was flowing through him. On arrival, he demanded that the goal nets be changed. No more black; they would be red and white, just like in 1996.
"Belonging is important and I belong to Atlético," he told Canal Plus. "When I left [in 2005] I knew I was leaving to be able to return one day. I knew I was coming back, I knew. I feel like I have been here my whole life. I know what the people want, what the club wants. When you belong everything is easier."
Simeone said he would be faithful to the club's identity: competitive, counterattacking, rooted in humility. Aware of their limitations but not frightened of them. He said he would rather attack once and win 1-0 than attack 15 times and not score: "If I see mud, I throw myself into it. Work is everything. Good players don't improve teams; players who want to win improve teams."
The fatalism was blown away and the Pupas with it but the idea of representing the city's working class remained. He was reinvigorating a lost identity. Simeone talked of commitment, spirit, solidarity, unity and competition. Over and over he repeated "game by game". It was a cliché that rang true, one that he turned into a philosophy: Cholismo, a way of life as propagated by El Cholo. This year, the Spanish dictionary considered including it. "Game by game is the life of the man on the street, day by day," Simeone says. "We see ourselves reflected in society, in people who have to fight to keep going. As soon as we stop fighting we have no chance. People identify with us, we're a source of hope to them. With the resources we have, we've been able to compete with bigger opponents."
This is the Simeone fans remembered: it turns out that, yes, Simeone the manager is like Simeone the player.
Simeone's eldest son Giovanni is an Atlético supporter who played for the local side Rayo Majadahonda, whose pitches lie barely 50m down the road from Atlético's Cerro del Espino training ground. There is still footage of the day that he left the team in 2005, waved off with a memento of his time while Diego watched from the sides, a lump in his throat. The following day, the roles reversed. Giovanni joined his dad and two siblings on the pitch as the Calderón said goodbye to Diego with tears, banners and chants. Now, Diego's back. Giovanni is not. He is 18 and lives back in Argentina, where he plays for River Plate. On Sunday afternoon, half an hour before the Madrid derby kicks off, his father will pick up the phone and give him a call.
