Unai Emery faces this match against Atlético de Madrid with the need for victory that brings his team closer to the Champions places. But he also has a personal challenge to meet, such as beating Cholo Simeone for the first time, who chokes one game after another.
The Argentine is one of the few coaches that Emery has failed to win. At least among those he has faced on several occasions. But the case with Simeone is even more striking because we are not talking about two or three or four clashes. Emery still has not been able to beat him in any of his 15 meetings.
Emery has faced Atlético de Simeone with three different teams: Valencia, Sevilla and Villarreal. Their duels end with seven draws and eight victories for the Argentine coach. The first match was a scoreless draw at Vicente Calderón a few weeks after the start of the Simeone era (February 5, 2012) and the last was 2-2 at Wanda, a day in which Emery was close to breaking. his hex, but he didn’t do it because of Mandi’s own goal on discount.
Neither leading Valencia in three matches, nor with Sevilla with nine games, and now with Villarreal after three games, has the Basque coach been able to win a match against the Argentine coach. It so happens that Simeone is the coach Emery has faced the most in his career without beating him, since he has never managed to beat Pep Guardiola or Mourinho either, although, with Guardiola he has been seen 12 times and with Mourinho, six.
It should be noted that the Atlético de Madrid coach is the fourth coach that Emery has faced the most times, only surpassed by the 20 clashes with Marcelino, the 17 against Manuel Pellegrini and the 16 by Joaquín Caparrós, who will be equaled by Cholo Simeone in the particular ranking of his Basque colleague.
Emery, it must be said, he does know what it’s like to beat Atlético de Madrid. But the one before Simeone, of course. The Villarreal coach has faced the rojiblanco club on 26 occasions and in three of them he was victorious, all with Valencia: the first with Javier Aguirre on the mattress bench (3-1), the second with Quique Sánchez Flores (1- 2) and the third with Gregorio Manzano (1-0).