Interview: Albert Ferrer on how Diego Simeone picks Atletico Madrid up and the Barcelona style debate | OneFootball

Football has an infatuation for the dramatic, and a tendency for exaggeration, yet none of the claims of cruelty, agony, and other fatalistic terms were met with any derision after Atletico Madrid exited the Champions League on Wednesday night. To their most bitter rivals, for the sixth time in succession, with one of their penalties being disallowed.

Regardless of what you thought of Diego Simeone’s theatrical attempts to raise the fans from silence one final time, in mutual appreciation between beaten heroes and a defeated support, you have to admire his presence of mind not to sink into similar despair. The fact is, when the game finished, there were little less than four days separated from another game that will be branded ‘season-defining’, and more so now.

“It’s always difficult isn’t it, when you have the possibility to turn the tie around at home against your direct rival, and you don’t do it. It’s going to be difficult to tune the team up. It’s been two difficult games [against Real Madrid and Getafe], but he will have to pick them up and focus their minds,” says Albert ‘Chapi’ Ferrer, Barcelona legend, a manager in his own right, and now one of the sharpest minds in football’s at times blunt television coverage.

“As a manager, you have to be the leader, to try to make the team think positively again. It is difficult, and of course, in the dressing room there are obviously leaders too, whose responsibility it is to cheer the team up and make them believe again.”

The question is how? The somewhat tired interrogations of whether Simeone should be more valiant, of this change and that decision on the pitch are already in an ether, because if Simeone can’t find a way recover that focus and balance of the mind on Sunday, Atletico will be playing against more than just Barcelona on Sunday night.

“If you look at the end of the game, when Simeone was going round the pitch on this sort of lap of honour, so the manager was the one to cheer the players and supporters up, and to basically be with the team.”

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“Knowing the manager, knowing Atletico,” says Ferrer, who has seen them in action throughout Simeone’s time as a player and manager, “the history of the club, how strong they are and how competitive, it’s not going to be a problem, and they will be 100% focused on Sunday.”

Even if Simeone can separate Sunday from circumstance, facing him is arguably the form side in Europe, coming off the back of a 17-game unbeaten run and a much more tranquil Tuesday victory over Benfica. Barcelona don’t just look cohesive as a unit under Hansi Flick, most players have shown something like the best football in their career this season. Despite their ‘suicidal’ high line, the Blaugrana have lived better on the edge than they have in many years with more room for error.

“On Sunday, Atletico will have more opportunities to hurt Barcelona, if it’s attacking the offside line, in transitions, it’s going to be a different game,” reasons Ferrer though. There is an argument, certainly backed by results and Ferrer, that this game suits Atletico far more. Los Rojiblancos have scored six times in two games against Barcelona, and are the only side to have faced Flick’s edition without suffering defeat.

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“Barcelona as a team are so, so offensive, they are basically looking to play just one way, they don’t have other plans, so they are offensive, aggressive, they push and have the defensive line very high. The big difference for Atletico Madrid that they will face on Sunday is that they will have spaces all game.” Even if getting the recipe right is no laborious, the steps are a little more straightforward explains the five-time La Liga champion.

“Real Madrid are a team that don’t have any problem dropping back, to leave no spaces for Atletico to run into. So it’s more complicated than against Barcelona. Against Barcelona it is difficult, because they are a continuous threat mostly offensively.”

Just a point separates the two sides at the summit of La Liga, with Real Madrid wedged between them in second. Barcelona have a game in hand though, and there is certainly a concern that while a loss at the Metropolitano might not be fatal to their title challenge, it could very well be on life support.

“For Atletico Madrid, the first thing is to make sure they don’t have the space to run into, and basically the only way to do that is to drop deeper. The few times that Barcelona have struggled this season has been with teams doing exactly that: dropping a bit deeper and attacking on the counter. So that’s what I expect from Atletico.”

The Catalan giants have been far more successful with Flick’s jolting defensive approach this season. At first, the wisdom of any radical change is doubted, but having largely calmed the offence caused at the concept itself, the next think pieces wonder whether a less absolutist idea might make more sense for everyone. And in fairness, it was questioned by Flick’s chief engineer after the last meeting between the two.

“I remember the game, the first tie in the Copa del Rey, Pedri said something in the post-game interview. ‘We need to learn from that. We were ahead in the tie, so we can’t keep pressing, keep going high, keep being exposed. We just need to be conscious of it’. Possibly he meant by not having the defensive line so high, and defending more.”

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The panting Pedri echoed, or perhaps directed, a lot of the accusations against Barcelona in the aftermath of that 4-4 thriller. Flick said less than an hour after the game had finished that he was happy with 95% of their performance though, and Ferrer sees no sign of the German instructing his men to give themselves an extra yard, in spite of Atletico’s success at getting in behind.

“I’m not sure that the manager shares these words though. I haven’t seen a game yet this season where Barcelona changed tactics, in terms of being ahead in the scoresheet, and in the last 20 minutes and just drop. So I don’t think he’s going to.”

“I think it’s more like when I was a player and we had Johan Cruyff, he said ‘listen, if they score three goals, we need to score four. It’s as simple as that.’ So I think that’s the approach.”

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Cruyff at Barcelona was perhaps the closest approximation to a religious prophet in football, and while the tenets of his philosophy have set the blueprint for several of Barcelona’s most successful periods in their history. At others, the style debate those blueprints appeared to trap managers though.

“The history of Barcelona shows us that the DNA is more or less the same,” Ferrer prefaces. “With Cruyff, Guardiola, even Luis Enrique, Xavi or Flick. Barcelona are a dominant team, and they will go on the pitch to dominate, and you can do it in different ways.”

An authority on the topic, Ferrer was in the C team when Cruyff returned to the club as a manager, and spent six years under him in the first team, coming through the ranks with Guardiola at his side.

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“I think that the play the team is showing is similar to Johan’s, similar to Luis Enrique’s, but I think with Pep, in his last stage at Barcelona, wanted to dominate completely, he wanted to dominate with the ball. Flick is more similar to our time with Cruyff, with quick transitions and attacking the space.”

“It is true that in the second half the season, with teams seeing how dangerous they are and with the space, we’ve seen teams have dropped a bit, and are defending a little deeper. So that has led Barcelona to have a little bit more possession, and to be a little less direct. So they’re having more of the ball, and playing out, it is a little slower, but the moment they do have space, they go into it.”

Xavi Hernandez, who played with Guardiola and then occupied a similar directorial duties to Pedri in his magical four-year run as coach, was widely expected execute a similar revolution when he returned as manager himself. Yet the La Liga title victory he authored, by design or compromise, was arguably the furthest removed from that style seen since Guardiola’s exit.

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The debate that dogged Xavi has barely been mentioned this year though. There is little doubt that Barcelona have been attractive to watch this year, but is there a sense that the passage from Xavi to Flick has widened the scope for what constitutes ‘the Barcelona style’ again?

“It is true that Barcelona have a philosophy and they try to control games, but I think that right now it is not so important. When Barcelona won La Liga with Xavi, they defended very well, and there were a lot of 1-0s, but nobody said anything because Barcelona needed to win La Liga.”

“This season it is the same. Barcelona are not playing like the philosophy that they ‘should be playing’, having a lot of possession and controlling games, but I think the objective is winning something, and people are happy with winning games, so it doesn’t matter so much this season.”

Watch Atlético de Madrid vs Barcelona on Sunday 16th March at 8pm on LALIGATV and ITV4. Showing ‘All of LALIGA, All in one place’, LALIGATV is available exclusively in the UK via Premier Sports, from just £7.99/month.