The problems of Spurs and Atletico Madrid

The problems of Spurs and Atletico Madrid

I can see similarities between Tottenham Hotspur and Spanish side Atletico Madrid.

Both have Argentinian managers and have to compete against financially better off teams, although Atletico can part-buy players (a percentage of their economic right being held by a third party) which Tottenham can't do so Atletico have an advantage which allows them greater scope to compete.

Atletico Madrid may have a transfer ban but I believe Simeone is keen on player loyalty and continuity anyway so I don’t think they’d make big changes to their squad even if they could sign players.

Therefore, they have a tremendously settled and familiar squad at the moment and that fans love because they’ve all stuck around. Nobody has jumped ship because of their ban, and that makes the bond between everybody even stronger, hence Atletico Madrid being so damn hard to beat.

They’ve lots of quality and lots of experience in their squad, which helps. They’ve got a brilliant centre-back pairing of players that love to wind their opponents up whilst also defending well. They’ve got solid full-backs who are as good at getting forward as they are at defending.

They’ve got lethal match-winners like Griezmann, Saul Niguez, Gameiro, Koke, Ferreira-Carrasco, and Correa in their squad to win them games. They’re fast on the break. They’re strong in the middle. They’ve got a safe pair of hands between the sticks.

This is a very settled, motivated, and well-organised Atletico Madrid team that are difficult to beat, they won the UEFA Europa League comfortably last season.

Still, they’re the kings of 1-0 win so what is handicapping them?

One reason – their opponents. Atletico Madrid’s biggest struggles come when they’ve got to break teams down that bunker up against them. They hate that. They much prefer to counter-attack with pace, which they’re seldom afforded the opportunity to do nowadays.


Now that all sounds very much like Spurs so perhaps we should look at how Atletico deal with the problem and consider the solutions they come up with.

COYS

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