Yahoo Sports contributors Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros react to the reports that Atletico Madrid are beginning the search to replace manager Diego Simeone. Hear the full conversation on the “The Cooligans” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

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Video Transcript

All right, one football drops a bomb that Atletico Madrid may possibly be looking for a replacement for Diego Simeone, someone who's been at his job since 2011.

How do you replace this, man?

Damn, get the gold watch ready, bro.

I've been there for a minute.

Yeah, you can go check out the article I want football, but we have to talk about this because even just thinking about Atletico Madrid with a different manager, it's almost like it hurts your brain a little bit.

Different manager.

This is gonna be a complete rehaul to the way this club does it.

Diego Simeone's essence is down to the to the to the youth levels.

He is what Atletico Madrid is presents themselves as, and those days are gone.

We were talking about Star Ferguson, Arsene Wenger.

No one hires the omnipotent manager anymore that that has control over everything from the font used in the, in the, you know, the, the menu.

of the, the hospitality section, which Arson Breer did, by the way, that wasn't just pulling from nowhere to how the youth players train.

They don't hire that anymore.

Now it's by committee, right?

Look at Klop leaves.

He was probably the last one because they bring in, uh, Arnie Slot and Arnie Slot is a head coach.

He is not a manager.

The era of managers is long gone, seemingly, and Diego Simeone may be one of those final.

Ts to fall.

Yeah, and they mentioned it in the article as well where they say, uh, it says quote, they say that he has gradually been losing power since new director of football, Carlos Busero arrived at the club 10 months ago.

So new guy comes in, hey, you know, I got a lot of ideas.

Look, this is, this is an app that's going to fix all of this, right?

So he comes to all these new ideas and then, yes, old, uh, maybe old timey managers, uh which Diego.

And it feels like he's still kind of that, um, might be, it's and it's interesting because it's not simply just a like, he's a bad manager, we got to get rid of him because that isn't the case.

Diego Simeone has gotten Altico Madrid to the Champions League every single season that he has been in charge, which is a remarkable feat.

You can't, there's no way to not applaud that.

That is a massive, you know, this article coming up is not, and these discussions coming up are not because that.

He has, uh, been some sort of failure.

It is, it is, he is the best manager outside of whoever is the Real Madrid and Barcelona manager, uh, for the last day.

In fact, he's carried Aletico Madrid into that conversation 100%, uh, and you know, they, they've won, uh, they've won La Liga.

They have, uh, Champions League or they got to the to the final.

They lost to twice.

They won La Liga twice.

So this is a, that was the year that they won La Liga.

And they lost to Real Madrid.

They beat Real Madrid to win La Liga, and then they lost to Real Madrid to win, uh, to lose Champions League final.

What's happening right now is seemingly a, a change to a power structure.

Uh, the, the article also mentioned that they, that, that the owners of the team are looking to sell.

Uh, also, it, it seems more of a business decision because they want to treat Diego Simeone with some respect and let him go out on his own terms.

He's also, I, I.

He's not the highest paid manager.

Yeah, my man is getting paid, paid.

He also, he signed a new deal until 2027, uh, and, uh, the article mentions that that was in part spread out to his large salary for the 23, 24 season, he was due to earn 45 million gross.

That's for a coach.

I need to figure out what that is.

It is remarkable.

And, and over the course of the 22,020.

4 to 2027, his total pay would be over 100 million.

Every week this man makes 865,384.

Y'all gonna have to drag me out of this stadium.

I would not quit.

I'd be like, you can take as much power as you want.

I'm staying in this defiant.

I know what my contract says.

You want me to what, like flip the popcorn or whatever.

That's what I'll do.

You need me to.

You want me to swing.

I'm sweeping for, I'm still getting 865 at the end of this week, right?

Friday is still gonna be lit.

All right.

So that seems to be the, uh, kind of what's going on.

There's gonna be a lot of changes to this team, and I think there's a lot of fear in, in, in, I think a lot of football fans have fear when their team switches from a, well, we know this guy's gotten this so far.

He makes all the right decisions to a committee.

And let us know.

Let us know in the comments.

Let us know what you think of that.

Do you want your club to switch to a single manager or if you have a single manager, do you want them to switch to a head coach and a committee?

This is a thing that, uh, you know, yeah, Johan Cruyff uh uh talked about this in, in his book when, when he was the manager at Barcelona, that the thing that he hated the most about the job wasn't the players, wasn't about going to training.

It wasn't it was always working with these football directors that don't really know the game as well as he does and And, and there's a, there's always a, a power imbalance or a power struggle, uh, uh, and this seems to be that they're, they're trying to get Diego Simeone out of that before it sort of gets to that point, or maybe it's already kind of getting there because, but I haven't, you know what, I gotta be honest with you.

You might not need a manager that makes 45 million a year.

Yeah, that's now at some point it just gets to like find a good manager that makes, I don't know, $5 million and save you $40 million you could spend on players.

I mean look.

To his credit, he has brought a lot of a lot of money but we're seeing some crop of new managers with some different ideas that don't necessarily garner that much money.

Exactly.

And then there also is that Simeone is not, it's not always the most attractive version of football.

He is obviously very last year he scored a lot of goals in the past it's very old, very defensive and stuff like that.

And but but more than anything you can tell like the players love playing for him and and Really trust the direction that he's taking the club.

So, uh, a lot, uh, to, you know, go read the article and go check it out at One Football.

But yeah, this is a legendary manager that's going to be very, very difficult to replace.

So we'll see what happens with Atletico Madrid.

Shout out to everybody watching on One Football.

We are the hooligans.

Go subscribe to our channel as well if you want to hear more great takes just like this.

Let us know what you think in the comments, and we will bring you up in this next video.

Exactly.

All right, yo, peace.

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