Diego Simeone had a short answer for how his Atletico Madrid side had just beaten Manchester United. His players had worked out how to get through the press, and then they had gone for the flanks.
“We knew they’d press high, [United] do that well, but we knew that if we beat that first press we could get into important positions,” Simeone told reporters at the Metropolitano.
“We knew we could hurt them on the wings.”
Twenty-four hours earlier, in the same city, Michael Carrick had held Simeone up as his personal defense. With Manchester United deep into one of the worst domestic starts in the club’s modern history, the interim manager pointed to the Argentine’s long reign at Atletico and Mikel Arteta’s at Arsenal to argue that time, not change, is what builds a project.
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“It pains me to say, but the one [manager] that won the league in our country last season has been there for a long period of time,” Carrick said. “It’s seven years, and the first two seasons were maybe seventh or eighth. I think he’s done an incredible job, Mikel, and that’s another example.”
He also rejected the mood around him.
“I understand that when it’s not going too well, there’s a real clamour and a real feeling that it’s a disaster and that everything needs to be changed. That’s not my mindset.”
Barrios inside a minute
The match answered him before he had taken his seat. Atletico midfielder Pablo Barrios opened the scoring after roughly 50 seconds, finishing a square ball from Alex Baena, who had found space in behind the United back line down the flank Simeone would later talk about.
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Johnny Cardoso had a second strike ruled out by VAR for handball in the buildup. United’s night tipped further when Leny Yoro was sent off in the 74th minute for a last-man challenge, and five minutes later Ademola Lookman added Atletico’s second to seal the 2-0 scoreline.
Carrick’s verdict, spoken to Amazon Prime after the final whistle, acknowledged what United had thrown away.
“We feel the game was there for us, is the biggest thing, so we could and should have got more from it,” Carrick said.
“Disappointed really with the chances that we had that we hadn’t had more.”
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Winless run deepens
The defeat extended United’s run without a win to five matches across all competitions. In the Premier League, Carrick’s side sit on six points from six games, their worst start to a top-flight season in four decades.
Simeone had sketched the contrast 24 hours earlier. The results looked bad, he said, but the team itself did not.
“We face an opponent that applies intense pressure in your half, closing you down quickly, and has players with speed,” he said in his pre-match press conference. “Despite their recent results, including a lot of draws, they are still creating the kind of danger that they did last year. They’re a strong team.”
The 2-0 was Atletico’s first win of this Champions League league phase, following their 2-1 opening defeat at Liverpool.
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