He Athletic of Madrid of Diego Simeone already see the match of the quarterfinals of the Champions League against him Leipzig; an unprecedented adversary in the history of the rojiblanco team and the Argentine coach, who together have won eight of their 14 matches against German rivals in European tournaments.
It is 57 percent successful in Simeone's confrontations against teams from that country, with four different opponents (Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, Hannover 96 and Borussia Dortmund). A draw, five defeats, 16 goals for and 14 against complete the ups and downs of 'su' Atlético against the German teams.
He has won, for example, twice a Bayern Munich (both 1-0, in the Champions League and in Vicente Calderón, in the 2015-16 semifinals and in the 2016-17 group stage), with goals from Saúl Ñíguez and Yannick Carrasco, but he has also lost two other occasions with him: 1-0, in 2016-17, and 2-1, in 2015-16, although the latter was enough to advance to the Champions League final.
He has also beaten a match against Borussia Dortmund, 2-0 last season in the group stage, although with him he also suffered one of the loudest blows, more for the score than for the game, of his current reality in the League of Champions: the 4-0 with which he fell at Signal Iduna Park on October 24, 2018.
And they have beaten Bayer Leverkusen in three of their six meetings, 1-0 in 2014-15, enough to force penalties that they later won in the knockout stages of the Champions League; 2-4 in 2016-17 in the same round and competition; and 1-0 this year at the Wanda Metropolitano, with a target of Alvaro Morata.
At the same time, they lost twice against him (1-0 in 2014-15 and 2-1 this same season at the Bay Arena) and drew in another: 0-0 in 2016-17 at Vicente Calderón, although then there was already sentenced their classification for the quarterfinals with 2-4 in the first leg.
The other German rival that Atlético de Simeone has already faced in these eight and a half years is Hannover 96, in the 2011-12 Europa League, the first of which they were proclaimed champions. He crossed paths with him in the quarterfinals and beat him both in the first leg in Madrid (2-1) and in the second leg in Germany (1-2).
THE ATLÉTICO, 21 WINS IN 44 GAMES AGAINST GERMAN TEAMS
Although the same rival always emerges in the memory of Atlético's history, the Bayern Munich, for that painful defeat in the final of the 1974 European Cup in the tiebreaker match (4-0), forced a day before in the last moment of extra time by the German team, by leveling the 0-1 that had marked Luis Aragones, the rojiblanco bloc has played a total of 44 games against rivals from that country, including the fourteen already mentioned with Diego Simeone.
You've won 21. It's 47 percent. He has drawn seven and lost 16. In terms of goals, there is almost absolute balance: he scored 59 goals and received 60.
At the same time, it has passed twelve of its seventeen heats against German teams throughout its history; the last eight – six with Simeone – consecutively.