MANCHESTER, England — After some time, feeling bored, chilly and moist, Éderson determined to go for a stroll. The Manchester Metropolis goalkeeper had spent 20 minutes dutifully guarding his penalty space. He had checked all 4 corners for hazard. He discovered nothing. He had stared, squinting, into the gap, scanning for some menace on the horizon. Nothing there, both.
And so, idly, he wandered ahead. He was solely alone. There was no one else in his half of the sphere. Manchester Metropolis’s central defenders, the gamers employed as his doughty sentries, have been now stationed deep in Atlético Madrid territory, within the kinds of positions extra habitually occupied by elfin attacking midfielders.
As he approached the midway line, Éderson slowed his tempo just a bit. He had the air of a person who had been strolling with no specific vacation spot in thoughts: He didn’t actually know what he deliberate to do when he obtained there. He bounced on his heels. He stretched down and touched his toes. He loitered for a number of seconds, reveling within the sensation of what it have to be prefer to be concerned in a soccer match, after which, slowly made his manner again, ruefully retaking his lonely submit.
The Brazilian’s ennui couldn’t — because it typically can, throughout the course of each the home and the European seasons — be traced to Manchester Metropolis’s overwhelming superiority over its opposition, to its huge monetary energy, to its supercharged energy. Or, quite, it can not solely be traced to that. To some extent, Éderson was bored as a result of Atlético Madrid was content material for him to be bored.
Maybe the very best indication of how Diego Simeone, Atlético’s coach, supposed to strategy Tuesday’s UEFA Champions League quarterfinal got here in its first second. Manchester Metropolis had the kickoff, and at that on the spot, each single Atlético participant appeared to take a step again, every man shifting a bit of farther into his personal half.
Or perhaps it was that temporary, fleeting and presumably unintended second when the redoubtable Geoffrey Kondogbia burst into Metropolis’s half, appeared up, and noticed nothing in entrance of him besides a few gentle blue jerseys and a broad swath of inexperienced. His teammates had not a lot as flickered. They have been all locked of their holding sample, underneath orders to face their floor.
That’s precisely how Simeone desires it, in fact. The Argentine is in some ways the polar reverse to Pep Guardiola, his Metropolis counterpart. That may be a cliché, now, the form of glib judgment that feels too straightforward, nevertheless it holds true.
Guardiola’s imaginative and prescient of soccer is predicated on making area seem out of nowhere. Simeone’s is concentrated, laser sharp, on discovering methods to make it evaporate. Guardiola has constructed his legend on making issues occur. Simeone has constructed his on ensuring they don’t.
Guardiola has stated, beforehand, that his splendid aim would contain each single participant touching the ball, presumably greater than as soon as, earlier than somebody — it doesn’t matter who — strokes it into an unguarded aim.
On Tuesday, Simeone appeared to be making an attempt one thing totally different: chasing some mad dream wherein a whole sport glided by with none of his gamers doing one thing as effete as truly touching the ball, so consumed have been they by the necessary enterprise of shutting down passing lanes and closing off angles of attack.
The model is, when it really works, tough to like however straightforward to admire. And it has labored, and labored spectacularly, for a while. That doggedness, that resolve, that defiance has develop into the cornerstone of Atlético’s trendy European identification, the core worth that has turned a perpetual underdog into a real European energy: a winner of two Spanish titles and two Europa Leagues, twice a Champions League finalist, now safely ensconced in its personal spectacular and vaguely soulless suburban superdome.
And it virtually labored right here, too, in opposition to Guardiola’s newest masterpiece, a crew that continues to be all however untouchable within the Premier League, a crew that most probably ranks as the very best on the planet. Atlético stifled Manchester Metropolis virtually solely for the primary half, and for huge tracts of the second, too, within the form of classic Simeone show that has earned Atlético its standing because the standard-bearers of soccer’s counterculture, its closing resistance to the prevailing wind of urgent and possession.
The just about is critical, although. Not just because Metropolis did, finally, choose its manner by means of, Phil Foden carving a path previous Atlético’s massed ranks, creating simply sufficient area for Kevin de Bruyne to win the sport. That won’t detain Simeone unnecessarily. He would, privately, be happy merely to have escaped from the Etihad together with his facet nonetheless within the tie.
No, much more necessary is what occurred on the different finish. There may be one type of protection that Atlético, this Atlético, has not mastered, one facet of its chosen artwork that continues to show elusive: the assault.
One of the best defensive performances essentially embrace moments of menace, in spite of everything. It’s in these moments, these uncommon forays upfield, when an overworked protection has time to recuperate, to reorganize, to regroup. And it’s in these moments, too, that doubt is sowed within the thoughts of the opposition, when even a crew as high quality as Manchester Metropolis begins to second-guess itself, when it begins to marvel if it ought to be committing fairly so many gamers ahead.
Simeone’s finest Atlético groups had that: the tempo of Antoine Griezmann, the guile of an autumnal David Villa, the taurine bellicosity of Diego Costa. This Atlético crew doesn’t. It didn’t muster a shot on aim within the first half. It had one, presumably, within the second, although there’s a excellent likelihood that it was meant as a cross.
That, finally, is the flaw within the plan, the issue with discovering contentment in nothingness. The protection didn’t maintain, not fairly, and now Atlético should win in Madrid subsequent week, and to try this it should open areas, not shut them. It should create, quite than destroy. Simeone was fairly joyful, it appeared, for Éderson to be bored. He was not almost as joyful, although, as Guardiola.
