Purist Guardiola faces pragmatism of Simeone as Man City face Atletico in Champions League

In late February 2012, Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona went to the old Calderon Stadium in Madrid to give a lesson in possession football. Their hosts, Atletico Madrid, had a relatively new manager in Diego Simeone, but already a defined, and effective style under him.

Over the 90 minutes, Guardiola’s team had the ball for close to three-quarters of the time it was in play. Yet they drew just one save from the then Atletico goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois.

Atletico, with their sparse share of possession, won more corners than Barca and drew eight saves from the visiting goalkeeper Victor Valdes. The winners? Barcelona, 2-1, thanks to a late Lionel Messi free-kick, struck while the Atletico defence were still preparing their defensive wall.

The game was Simeone’s 10th in charge of Atletico, his first loss and a strong signpost to how he would organise and inspire Atletico over the next decade, building into European heavyweights and domestic title-contenders a club who previously had a reputation for erratic frailty. There would, over Simeone’s next 561 matches managing the club, be very few further times when an Atletico defensive wall was shabbily put together.

Tuesday’s first leg of the Champions League quarter-final between Manchester City and Atletico will be only the fourth meeting as managers of Guardiola and Simeone. That’s a relatively light head-to-head history given they have been elite coaches for so long.

They are contemporaries, both were high-class central midfielders as players, but in terms of coaching dogmas, they can seem poles apart: Pep the purist’s purist, ‘Cholo’ Simeone the arch-pragmatist.

In any Atletico side of the Simeone era, you expect certain characteristics. Guardiola listed them on Monday. “They