Diego Simeone Had a Plan. Now He Has a Problem.

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 space, scanning for some menace on the horizon. Nothing there, both.

And so, idly, he wandered ahead. He was completely alone. There was no person else in his half of the sector. Manchester Metropolis’s central defenders, the gamers employed as his doughty sentries, had been now stationed deep in Atlético Madrid territory, within the types 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 explicit vacation spot in thoughts: He didn’t actually know what he deliberate to do when he bought 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 should be prefer to be concerned in a soccer match, after which, slowly made his manner again, ruefully retaking his lonely publish.

The Brazilian’s ennui couldn’t — because it usually can, through 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 power. Or, somewhat, it can’t 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 perfect indication of how Diego Simeone, Atlético’s coach, supposed to method Tuesday’s UEFA Champions League quarterfinal got here in its first second. Manchester Metropolis had the kickoff, and at that immediate, each single Atlético participant appeared to take a step again, every man shifting a bit farther into his personal half.

Or perhaps it was that transient, fleeting and probably 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 had been all locked of their holding sample, beneath orders to face their floor.

That’s precisely how Simeone needs it, in fact. The Argentine is in some ways the polar reverse to Pep Guardiola, his Metropolis counterpart. That could be a cliché, now, the type of glib judgment that feels too straightforward, but it surely holds true.

Guardiola’s imaginative and prescient of soccer is predicated on making area seem out of nowhere. Simeone’s is targeted, 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 mentioned, beforehand, that his supreme objective would contain each single participant touching the ball, probably greater than as soon as, earlier than somebody — it doesn’t matter who — strokes it into an unguarded objective.

On Tuesday, Simeone appeared to be making an attempt one thing totally different: chasing some mad dream during which a complete sport glided by with none of his gamers doing one thing as effete as truly touching the ball, so consumed had been they by the essential 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 change into the cornerstone of Atlético’s fashionable European id, 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 nearly labored right here, too, in opposition to Guardiola’s newest masterpiece, a staff that continues to be all however untouchable within the Premier League, a staff that probably ranks as the perfect on the earth. Atlético stifled Manchester Metropolis nearly completely for the primary half, and for huge tracts of the second, too, within the type of classic Simeone show that has earned Atlético its standing because the standard-bearers of soccer’s counterculture, its ultimate resistance to the prevailing wind of urgent and possession.

The virtually is critical, although. Not just because Metropolis did, finally, decide 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, way more essential is what occurred on the different finish. There’s 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 embody moments of menace, in spite of everything. It’s in these moments, these uncommon forays upfield, when an overworked protection has time to get better, to reorganize, to regroup. And it’s in these moments, too, that doubt is sowed within the thoughts of the opposition, when even a staff as wonderful as Manchester Metropolis begins to second-guess itself, when it begins to marvel if it must be committing fairly so many gamers ahead.

Simeone’s greatest Atlético groups had that: the tempo of Antoine Griezmann, the guile of an autumnal David Villa, the taurine bellicosity of Diego Costa. This Atlético staff doesn’t. It didn’t muster a shot on objective within the first half. It had one, probably, within the second, although there’s a superb probability 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, somewhat than destroy. Simeone was fairly joyful, it appeared, for Éderson to be bored. He was not almost as joyful, although, as Guardiola.