Simeone: "We are very excited to see the best Joao Félix"

MADRID, 30 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The coach of Atlético de Madrid, Diego Pablo Simeone, confessed that both he, the club and the fans are "very excited" to see the best version of the Portuguese Joao Félix, after the return of the break due to the national team matches and the eve of the LaLiga Santander match against Sevilla at the Sánchez Pizjuán.

"He returned to training yesterday and today, I hope that when he has to do it he will do it in the best way. The club, the people and we as a team are very excited to see the best Joao Félix and it will depend on what he can give us", declared the Argentine at a press conference before traveling to Seville.

About his rival, the coach of the mattress group is not confident despite the bad start that Julen Lopetegui's men have had. "Football is what it is. Obviously, Sevilla has had to play many important, difficult, complex games, with many difficulties and with great rivals", he commented.

The 'Cholo' described Lopetegui as "a great coach who has been doing very well at Sevilla in recent years". "You can see the team committed to work, in these last two games they have obtained positive results in difficulty. Tomorrow we know what we are going to find, a team that plays well, that has a good predisposition to attack and we imagine that scenario ", he pointed.

The mattress coach believes that Sevilla "did very well with Espanyol, they worked as a team, given the difficulty of that moment they were able to react and resolve", and that in their last game "against Villarreal they competed very well". "He can play with 4-3-1-2 or 4-2-3-1, with Navas behind or ahead, which will already be a matter for him (Lopetegui), but he has shown different formats within the same idea" , deepened.

"Surely Sevilla has had these two weeks to work with many footballers, because I think that four or five have gone to their national team alone, and that allows you to work these 15 days with peace of mind, and we will find a team that plays well, that he has good thinking as a team football-wise", he assured.

Simeone, who has spent more than 30 games without repeating the starting eleven, does not see this circumstance as something negative. "The other day I was reading, I don't remember in which newspaper, how well Real Madrid is doing because it rotates continuously. The result ends up placing a question on one side or the other, but in reality it's the same thing," he explained. .

The Argentine, who could change the defense of five with which he has started the season with one of four, wanted to distance himself from any tactical cliché. "Many times one goes out with a defense of four, but it's never four, because the left wing or the right wing ends up being the fifth, and you focus on playing with four, and you don't play with four, you defend with five," he explained.

"Many teams, standing in the photo, have four, but later when the team is defending, if you look from one side or the other, if the left wing chases the right back, if they stop the photo there are five, then it changes little from being five or four," he added.

Looking ahead to playing against Sevilla, he affirms that "they can play with three or four, with Reinildo as he has been doing, with Carrasco there on the left, which can be four or five depending on the situation."

This also affects Axel Witsel, who could return to midfield after having to start as a center back during his time at Atlético. "We have the option of playing with him as a libero and in the middle, joining, introducing himself as some teams do in the same game, attacking as a low midfielder and defending as a libero. We will value it and it is an option that the footballer gives us when he is in the field," he said.

On the controversy over the substitutions of Antoine Griezmann, Simeone believes that "there is no difficulty". "We pick who we think should start, who should come in, when to come in, and from there it's the result that matters," he said.

Diego Pablo Simeone also threw a cape on his compatriot 'Papu' Gómez, who acknowledged that he was already thinking about Qatar 2022. "You have to understand the context of the answer because of how the question comes. I am a footballer, and one comes and He says 'are you thinking about the World Cup all the time?'

The Argentine tried to explain his argument through an everyday example. "When you get together with your friends to play ball, you forget what's going on in the family for that little while you're playing, then the family is extremely important," he declared.

"To reflect a bit the context of the response of any footballer that 40 days after a wonderful situation that is playing a World Cup, anyone would answer that. But then when the games start, they think about the game they are playing, of course", concluded.