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I´m not raising my voice – Simeone keeping calm amid Atletico struggles

SoccerNews in La Liga 3 Nov 2017

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Diego Simeone is remaining tranquil and refusing to raise his voice at Atletico Madrid players as his team continue to go through a difficult spell.

Atletico are by no means in a crisis, as they sit fourth in LaLiga after going unbeaten in their first 10 matches, but Simeone’s men have been far from their very best.

Tuesday’s 1-1 draw at home to Azerbaijan’s Qarabag in the Champions League left Atletico with just three points from four matches, making progression to the knockout stage now a tall order.

That stalemate was their sixth draw in eight matches across all competitions, with a 1-0 win at Celta Vigo on October 22 their only triumph since beating Sevilla 2-0 on September 23.

And the typically volatile Simeone insists he is not losing his patience or temper with Atletico.

“I am not raising my voice,” Simeone told a news conference ahead of Saturday’s trip to Deportivo La Coruna.

“The reality is, once you finishing counting the words [you speak], they just come and go. You can say one word more and you say one word less – it doesn’t really change anything.

“What really counts is what you do on the pitch. The reality is we have drawn many more games than we would liked, but we were much closer to winning them than losing them, and that in itself brings us closer to our objective.

“We are a team and when one lives as part of a team we are all implicated in achieving our objectives, because we are a team.

“We don’t depend on one player. We don’t have just one player who will win a game. The situation is very good, we are focused on the collective and we push for this as a consequence of being a team.”

Despite Atletico’s struggles, particularly in front of goal, Simeone is adamant that he is not about to start ringing the changes.

“For us we have almost never changed our way,” he said. “I said this to the players for the second half in Girona, for the game against Valencia, the game against Las Palmas, the games against Villareal, Sevilla, almost the whole match against Barcelona and the match against Roma.

“We will keep producing these kinds of good performances because that is what we’re doing.

“They played well in all of them. Against Las Palmas we played differently to against Roma. The team responded in the best possible way.

“We need to live with that kind of pressure. We are a united as a team and we will work as a team. And the best responses we can have individually have a consequence as a team, and that will improve our level. We will aim for that.”

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