Simeone: “It wasn’t because of City, it’s easy to blame the above”

It was not a good match for Atlético.

We started with a Llorente action that was one of the only ones that we could find a circulation to be able to find the breaking movements. After that, it became more and more difficult for us, it became difficult to elaborate, to generate danger, the rival worked the game very well, defensively waiting for what we could give, little appeared on both sides, a penalty came that made us look forward with more enthusiasm to get closer to the tie, but it could not be.

Is it Mallorca’s defensive merit or Atlético’s offensive demerit?

First always the virtue of the rival of generating difficulty for you to progress, break, associate… And obviously to us the little capacity to generate attack plays. The situations that we wanted to find did not appear, only that of Llorente and I remember few associative plays to mess up a team that defended very well.

Did you think it was a penalty?

It was very far away and very covered by players. If the referee pointed it out and the VAR did not call him, they will have understood that it was a penalty.

Could they have been conditioned by the tie against City?

It is always very easy when a game ends to blame the lack of concentration for the above. No. Today we didn’t have a good game, the rival took us to the game that suited him best and we couldn’t break that closed, orderly and correct defense that the rival had.