5 min readMay 4, 2026 10:48 AM IST
The firm, fiery eyes of Diego Simeone welled up towards the end of the first episode of a documentary on him, Living Match by Match. He was recounting a chat with his four-year-old daughter. “I told her football was my life, and she corrected, ‘No, we are your life’.” The eyes welling up again, he nodded and said: “But she was right.”
The Amazon Prime documentary deconstructs the raging man in pitch-black coat prancing up and down the Atletico Madrid touchline and separates the man from the manager, stitching together his more humane, likeable side, his fears and fragilities. He smiles more often than most during games; he cries often too, especially when paying tribute to his idol Diego Maradona. He wears turtlenecks and round-necks of more coloured textures.
There are warm nuggets into his managing style. When his team was wobbling in the title race in the 2020-21 season, he hung childhood photos of every player next to their shelf in the locker room. The players were surprised. He told them: “Do you remember your childhood dream?” He made another morning ritual — his players would not say “good morning” to each other, but greet one another with “We’re going to be champions.” They got the point, toughened up and delivered him the title in a suspenseful climax.
One of Simeone’s favourite players, Fernando Torres, explains how he motivates his charges. “Cholo knows how to motivate people,” the forward said. “There are team talks before games when he has to stop as he is overcome with emotion. It’s not a pose, it’s real. He feels it. And if you see your coach feels it, you follow him.”
Every Simeone team bears certain common traits — grit, fight and heart. Sometimes it boils to extremes that his tactics could be misconstrued as cynical and provocative, as any Arsenal supporter who watched the first leg would readily vouch. The Atletico codes are shaped as much by circumstance as by the characteristics of their manager.
Atletico were never as rich or powerful as the El Clasico rivals, frequently forced to rebuild after losing their finest players to direct rivals — so much so that only two players, captain Koke and Antoine Griezmann, remain from the team that lost to Real Madrid on penalties in the 2016 Champions League final. Simeone did not complain. He just kept building teams that fought and challenged the duopoly of Real Madrid and Barcelona in La Liga, even when crowns didn’t follow. The latest iteration is perhaps his most dynamic, finally shedding the stereotype of cynicism.
Few teams are defined by their manager as much as Atletico is. It was always Lionel Messi’s Barcelona, it is already Lamine Yamal’s now; it was always Cristiano Ronaldo’s Real Madrid, it could soon be Kylian Mbappe’s. But Atletico was always Simeone’s. A tough-tackling defensive midfielder, he belonged to the pragmatic school of Carlos Bilardo and not his antithesis, César Luis Menotti, the romantic. He snarled, sniggered, exaggerated fouls — rewatch the David Beckham sending-off in the 1998 World Cup — and stretched the laws to their limits without ever breaking them. The Brazil striker Ronaldo says in the documentary: “Cholo was a master at kicking you, but not getting caught and sent off.” He once left a stud-shaped hole in the thigh of Atletico Bilbao’s star midfielder Julen Guerrero.
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Several times in the documentary he insists he was creative too, pointing to a century of goals scored for his country and seven clubs. The one that best embodies his spirit came against Colombia in the 1993 Copa America. The goalkeeper and defender are converging towards the ball, but a galloping Simeone intervenes. The goalkeeper trips him, but he bounces back onto his feet and fizzes an angled shot into the empty net from an awkward angle. In a group of artists and mavericks, he was the artisan that let their artistry shine. So chaotically creative were some of the sides that teammates would drift from pre-game tactics and assume wanton positions on the field. Simeone filled in the spaces they vacated, fiercely guarding against quick counters. “If there is one thing I am, it is very hard-headed. If I want something, I go after it,” he wrote in Coach’s Voice.
But the pragmatic man in dark suits has a bright, vivid dream — to win the Champions League. It eluded him in his playing days, once crushingly in the 119th minute of a quarterfinal against Ajax. Twice he has endured the pain as manager, both times to bitter rivals Real Madrid — once through a stoppage-time equaliser, the second in a shootout. “I don’t feel it as an obsession, that would be the wrong path,” he said. “I see it as a dream, which is something positive. And we all share that dream.”
Between him and that dream is Arsenal at the Emirates, managed by a man who wears black himself. Emotions will tumble, tempers will rage. But whether Atletico loses or wins, Simeone will come back — because “football is life.”
