Diego Simeone, anti-futbol and the threat posed to Pep Guardiola

As the tributes to Johan Cruyff made clear, his influence over modern football is immense. No single figure in the post-War game has so shaped how the game is played and there is a sense in which the two Champions Leagues Barcelona won under Pep Guardiola were a consecration of his legacy: a player to whom he gave his debut honing his ideas and producing a team widely recognised as one of the greatest there has ever been. But there are other ways to play.

Wednesday’s Champions League semi-final will be a clash of philosophies, between Guardiola seeking a final validation for his three years at Bayern, and Diego Simeone, whose Atletico follow a very different path.

The incident in Atletico’s win over Malaga on Saturday that saw Simeone sent to the stands was typical. A Malaga break was thwarted when a ball-boy threw a ball onto the pitch, apparently at Simeone’s instigation. That was the essence of his management: a cunning and creativity allied to a win-at-all-costs mentality.

Simeone’s upbringing could hardly have been further from the possession-based Total Football philosophy instilled at La Masia. His youth career was spent at Velez, where he came under the influence of Victorio Spinetto, the man who essentially invented anti-fútbol in Argentina. Spinetto had defined the Velez style, establishing them as a top-flight club and, by the eighties, had a role as co-ordinator of youth development. For him, guts and character – what he turned “fibra” (fibre) – were the most important asset a player could have.

“Of course it matters whether a player is technically gifted or not,” he said, “but if he doesn’t have fibra, he cannot become a great… You know which are the most generous players on the pitch? Those who are men in the full sense of sacrifice. Together with their talent they give everything that they have inside... Because they have shame and they don’t like to leave the field defeated.”

Simeone had fibre in abundance and Spinetto loved him for it – it was he who gave him the nickname “Cholo”, after the great Velez and Boca Juniors defender Carmelo “Cholo” Simeone (no relation).

The term anti-fútbol was always pejorative, but context is required.

When it was applied to Spinetto’s Velez in the forties and fifties, it was because he disdained the prevailing orthodoxy that demanded football be attacking and based on beauty and individual skill. It later became something rather darker, with the cynicism of Osvaldo Zubeldia’s great Estudiantes side that won three successive Copas Libertadores between 1968 and 1970. They intimidated and antagonised and didn’t much care how they won so long as they did win – a run that ended only when three of their players were jailed after a particularly brutal Intercontinental Cup final against AC Milan.

Simeone never played for Estudiantes but they were the club where he made his name as a manager. Taking the foundations that had been left by Carlos Bilardo, who had played for Zubeldia’s great side and succeeded him as the high priest of anti-fútbol, he fashioned a side in the best traditions of the club, conceding only 12 goals in 19 games in the 2006–07 Apertura, winning the club’s first title for 23 years in a play-off.

Improbably successful as Simeone has been at Atletico, it was that Estudiantes side that embodied his ideal of football. “They remain the team that captured best what I think of football,” he said, “with which I felt most identified: practicality, commitment, collective effort, talent, simplicity.”

It is those values he has brought to Atletico and that he will apply against Guardiola’s more proactive approach. For Guardiola, this is an immense tactical challenge. No coach at the top of the modern game is so intricately involved with his team; for nobody else is the way his team plays so much a reflection of his personality. He is intense and controlling, micromanaging everything from the edge of his technical area, forever looking for weaknesses to probe or threats to quell. It is exhausting and draining and has produced some scintillating football. But at Bayern there remains an absence.

He was appointed to win the Champions League which, unhelpfully for him, Jupp Heynckes brought to Bayern the season before he arrived. Seven points clear with three games to go, Bayern are likely to complete a third Bundesliga title in three seasons under Guardiola, but such is their financial advantage over their rivals that cannot be considered a great achievement. The quality and inventiveness of some of the football played means he will not be regarded as a failure, but he needs a European success to validate his time in Germany.

Bayern have twice lost in semi-finals under Guardiola, first to a smart Real Madrid who picked them off on the counter-attack, and then to a Barcelona side that essentially played the same style of football more effectively. But Atletico in a sense represents the greatest tactical challenge, a team whose tenets could hardly be further removed from his own.

Atletico will let Bayern have the ball; a possession split of 30-70 is likely. They will sit deep at times, with two banks of four denying Bayern space (no other side in Europe’s top five leagues catches opponents offside as infrequently as Atletico). At other times they will press, looking to disrupt the Bayern flow out from the back by shutting down the avenues between the holding midfield (Xabi Alonso and/or Thiago Alcantara) and the full-backs (Philipp Lahm and David Alaba) as they did against Barcelona in the last round. They’re pressing more this season, winning possession outside their defensive third 24% more this season than last – a sign of Simeone’s constant search for improvement.

Bayern, amid a general defensive laxity, have looked vulnerable when pressed in the past two rounds, with Manuel Neuer seeming unusually jittery. They have players who are susceptible to the sort of provocation in which Atletico will indulge.

For Guardiola, a Champions League success would silence any reasonable doubts about his time in Germany. For Simeone, a Champions League would be a stunning culmination to his already barely credible work at Atletico. But what makes this semi-final so intriguing is that it is also a clash of cultures.