“You can only break a negative charge by being a champion”

Germán Burgos said goodbye at the end of last season of what was his home for the last eight and a half years, Atlético de Madrid. The Argentine, who came to the club in December 2011 at the hands of his compatriot Simeone to be his second, said goodbye to the rojiblanco team after the elimination in the quarterfinals of the Champions League against Leipzig in Lisbon. Burgos had already announced before returning to the competition after the stoppage due to the coronavirus that at the end of the course he would leave the entity to start his career as head coach. Waiting to find destiny, has given an extensive interview to the French magazine ‘SO FOOT’.

Of course, began by talking about his great friend and mentor, Simeone. “With the Cholo we are friends, as players we were together for almost ten years in the national team and almost four years at Atlético de Madrid. He looks up and I already know what he's going to say. In the national team we ate together, that is, I have eaten more times with Simeone, Batistuta and Pablo Cavallero, who formed the table that way, than with my family ”. Regarding the conscientious work of the Atlético coach, Burgos assures that he considers himself “a little bit more obsessive than Cholo. Actually, it's because I don't like anything more than football. That thing about watching old football, like I do, when I watch games from the '70s, I think he doesn't. I don't look at anything else “.

An issue that is discussed in the interview is whether they consider that the fact of having played in the elite as footballers can affect their ego when it comes to training and that this is transmitted to the players, the ‘Mono’ affirms that “It's the opposite, because they don't remember you as a player, some of them didn't even see you. So who are you talking to? You have to talk to him with what you are, and what marks you is the present. You are this, you are a coach. Grab any coach and tell him to run a hundred meters. He cannot run, he cannot hold. So that's it, that stage is over. You introduce yourself as a coach and They have to believe you as a coach, not because of what you did before. That does not matter”.

Burgos has not yet found a team to debut as head coach in the elite, although he already made his first steps in a humble club in Madrid, the Carabanchel, and the Argentine talk about this stage. “There I had the experience of being the first coach, which is wonderful. It was the way I had to go and I have some fantastic memories. There I reached my first tournament, we managed to get promoted to the team, we were the least beaten squad and the highest scoring forward. It is a regional division, something beautiful. However, I spent two years at Atlético de Madrid's Tercera and one year at Alcorcón. So I had my preparation before going to Catania”.

He also spoke, unsurprisingly, of the rojiblanco club, which states that “There can always be a negative charge, as we have had at Atlético, who had not beaten Madrid for 14 years. Imagine that a kid was born, he was almost finishing high school and he had not seen his team beat the rival of the city once. It's fucked up. Changing that is only achieved with the positive conviction that one day it has to be. And we just won a championship too. So you can no longer see that at Atlético, that negative charge that people brought with them no longer exists. But you need to come out champion to break that, it's the only way”.

If there is something that has characterized this stage of Simeone and his assistant on the Atlético bench, it is the devotion of the vast majority of players who have been at their command and Burgos give the recipe to get it. “Players need to be led and for that you have to conquer their heart. It's like she's a girlfriend. With your weapons, you have to make the player fall in love, as if you had to make that girl fall in love. You have to take it by the hand and carry it. But yes, when the player gives his heart to you, don't let him down. That is the unspoken condition there is, because he is giving you life, he is burning his ass for you. Once he gave you his heart, well, let's go together. Each player already has the spirit, and one as a coach can shape it or not, because it can also throw you off the rails”.

He even had words for some players from his time at Atlético. “Diego Costa is a predator, he is like a force of nature, a storm, a hurricane wind that you have to control, because if you let go … I mean, you have to talk to him a lot, and we do that, that's an important part of our job. But the clearest example of a transformation, of a positive development of a player As for what we have done as a coaching staff at Atlético, I think it's Griezmann and it could also be Koke or Saúl, who are also boys from the house”.

During your career as a professional footballer you had many coaches, but When choosing the best two names stand out: Carlos Griguol, who was his first coach at Ferro, and Luis Aragonés. Burgos declares that “I see the same thing in both. They are guys with whom you learn even beyond football. You learn to live, because they see you walk and they already know what you are going to say to them, they know if you are worried, if you are nervous”.

Of the ‘Sage of Hortaleza’ he also recalls that It was essential for him to be able to get the title of coach. “They are private courses, reduced, for people who have played in national team or a certain number of years at a high level. I turned in the papers and I was calm, with eight years in the national team, imagine. But I don't know what jumped and they said they wouldn't let me participate in the course. At that time, Luis Aragonés was the coach of the Spanish team. So Luis quotes me in a room here in Las Rozas. A secretary appears, and from the start the guy already had a servile attitude towards Luis. He began to explain in a good way why I could not enter the course. And he cut him off screaming: “Who has the key?” Echoed throughout the complex. The secretary began to stutter. Luis punched the table and continued shouting: “How this man is not going to be a coach!” The secretary left, came back a minute and said: “Burgos is already registered, Don Luis.”.

In the extensive interview they are also told personal issues and anecdotes of Simeone's former assistant.

Talk about topics like his sense of humor: “Born of my family. We were always laughing at everything and, together, going through anguish or whatever with that mechanism. I think it comes from there. Look at what my grandmother used to say, that if we had eaten less, we would have been millionaires. Is right! My old woman juggled the Milanese, she cooked a mountain of Milanese ”. It even addresses the issue of Martians, ensuring that loves and what ever He had commented to Cholo that “you don't give him a ball; they will give him ball when the Martians make a team and appear in the league “.

In addition, it analyzes a thorny issue, such as that of the brave bars in Argentina and his confrontation with the fans of Platense. “I wasn't as much of a fight as many people think, but sometimes you have to. That time I fought to defend myself, and we fought well, huh. There were several of them, like eight, and the one who gave me did it with a mitten, it was a nice fight. The good thing is that I ran into that fan from Platense later, when I was already in River, and he told me: “I hit you, I hit you,” and I made gestures to him that everything was fine. I recognized the guy by the teeth, he had very few, but that fight was spectacular, it looked like one from the Wild West”.