Atlético de Madrid - Valencia will kick off at 9pm at the Metropolitano once again. A quintessential LALIGA match that, personally, we hope to see for many more years. Which would mean that Valencia is still in the top international competition, despite the disastrous management of the president.
But in this article we are not going to focus on the team but on Diego Pablo Simeone's personal record against Valencia. A record that 'scares Beelzebub' and that contrasts with the one he had as a football player. Today in this article we analyze it and see what the main reasons may be.
From player: a disaster
And not a Simeone disaster as a player, but his history against Valencia. Whether it was with Sevilla, Atlético de Madrid or Lazio, Simeone does not have good figures against the Valencian team. Pay attention to this because it is surprising.
From 16 games played in all competitions: three wins, six draws and seven defeats. If we analyse the victories: two were by a narrow margin and one of them did not serve to advance to the Champions League round against Lazio. Of course, it will be difficult to find a team against which he has faced so many players and has such a negative record.
From the coach: the tables have turned
What is often said about Simeone is that he was a very good player who had a very good career. However, as a coach he has shattered all the records he achieved on the pitch. With Valencia he is a clear example of this, he has turned things around in a savage way.
He has gone from winning 19% of his matches as a player to winning 59%. Translated into matches, he has achieved 17 victories, 9 draws and 3 wins out of 29 matches. The record of the Argentine coach, who is undoubtedly the bête noire of Valencia fans, is absolutely outrageous.
If we look a little deeper into the statistics, to make it more brutal, we could say that of thelast 18 games, they have only lost one against Valencia and that was last year. The best thing about football is that this is all very well, but it is of no use in winning the next game. Demonstrating that this Atlético de Madrid wants to compete for everything is the result of game by game and overcoming important obstacles such as Pablo Barrios' injury.
This is how Simeone faces his thirtieth match against Valencia in charge of the red-and-white dugout. A record, as you can see, very uneven, which reflects the squads that Simeone has had and how he has strengthened the players under his command. In the same way, it shows the terrifying degradation of Valencia and the decline deliberately caused by its president Peter Lim.