Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone has claimed that he looks at a player’s star sign before signing them, and says that he likes Geminis as they are aggressive and intense.
• Simeone: Real and Barca hold the cards
Simeone has had tremendous success in just over two years at Atletico, taking a previously disorganised and unmotivated squad and turning them into a focused and intense unit which is now a serious challenger for this season’s La Liga and Champions League trophies.
Asked by Spanish magazine Jotdown if he was a believer in horoscopes, the Argentine coach said that he was.
“Yes,” Simeone said. “Because the characteristics, the personalities are the same. Geminis are aggressive, changeable, intense. The characteristics of people according to their star sign are similar, and we pay attention to how we can get the best out of them. I like brave people.”
Simeone’s success at Atletico has seen him become one of Europe’s highest-rated coaches and led to speculation he could be tempted away to a bigger-spending side in either England or Italy.
The former Atletico player said he could not be sure how long he would stay in his current job, but at the moment he was happy to be a part of the long-term project which had been put in place at the Estadio Vicente Calderon.
“I always go before they throw me out, and I always think they could throw me out tomorrow,” Simeone said. “You never know, things in football change very quickly, but I value trying to stick to the same line. The club is showing that, not just with my long contract, but with those of [Diego] Godin, Miranda, Filipe Luis, Gabi, [Diego] Costa and Juanfran.”
Simeone also picked out Real Madrid’s Xabi Alonso and Barcelona’s Sergio Busquets as his current favourite players.
“Busquets reads everything,” he said. “Players like Busquets or Xabi Alonso in midfield have the capacity to read the whole game. It was not a coincidence that the return of Xabi Alonso meant that Madrid found the famous ‘balance’ their coach was looking for. But the balance is Xabi Alonso, not the others.”