Is Atletico the best run team in Europe?

Hapless_Hans wrote:

Lord Spencer wrote:

Hapless_Hans wrote:

If you extend your grasp of history just a little longer than 10 years, you'll see that Dortmund isn't only the small but fantastically run club 'in the shadow of bigger clubs'.

They were a huge club in Germany, wasting money, becoming incorporated etc, ruining their finances before, and they're just recovering now, really.

Compared to Bayern, and the rest of Europe's biggest team, they are bloody minnows.

That's the point though. They weren't 'bloody minnows' compared to us around 2000. They had won the CL and made crazy money signings. Amoroso etc.

So why would they be better run than, err, us, just because they've managed to climb out of a hole they themselves dug?

Marseille won the CL once. So what?

In their history, BVB won the league 8 times. Runner's up 6 times. In the last 5 years they managed each two times.

They only managed 3 wins at the cup, and they didn't do much in Europe outside of a CL win.

Compare that to Bayern, who has 24 league titles (since BVB joined the league) and 17 cups, and 5 CL.

They are "bloody minnows" compare to Bayern.

In fact, Atletico are a bigger team in Spain than BVB is in Germany, with more league and cup wins. In Europe, they are about equal.

So, the fact that both are competing really well with the giants is commendable, because they are smaller clubs to those they compete with in every definition of the word.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:5+ years? It's only since Simeone has been around. Atleti is actually known for being the worst run team, they have the biggest budget and biggest fanbase (aside of barca and real) in the league and even so they overpaid for shit players, could not keep a manager for more than a season, and consistently lost the CL spots to Villareal, Sevilla and Valencia. I fully expect them to go back to being a shambles of a team when Simeone leaves.

agree with this. we are being caught up in the present. since simeone came, atleti have been doing well, and we give them props for that, especially simeone. but if we are looking at best run over a longer period of time, we cannot forgive the way the club was run under jesus gil, in fact, they were probably among the worst run between 99-08.

titosantill wrote:

BarrileteCosmico wrote:5+ years? It's only since Simeone has been around. Atleti is actually known for being the worst run team, they have the biggest budget and biggest fanbase (aside of barca and real) in the league and even so they overpaid for shit players, could not keep a manager for more than a season, and consistently lost the CL spots to Villareal, Sevilla and Valencia. I fully expect them to go back to being a shambles of a team when Simeone leaves.

agree with this. we are being caught up in the present. since simeone came, atleti have been doing well, and we give them props for that, especially simeone. but if we are looking at best run over a longer period of time, we cannot forgive the way the club was run under jesus gil, in fact, they were probably among the worst run between 99-08.

I mean I made the thread.  Where not looking over a long period in history.  I said the last 5 years or so.  We all know how bad Atleti were run earlier in the 2000's.

Which really makes it all that more impressive.

IF we were looking from 2000-now it would probably be Barcelona seeing as they won the Champions league starting 7 or 8 homegrown players in the final and starting some games with 11 Masia graduates.  I don't know if we will ever see something like that again not to mention producing 4 of the best players of the last decade in Xavi, Iniesta, Messi and Puyol.

Buying Ronnie for 30 mill instead of Beckham (Although Madrid didn't leave them much choice), Alves for 30 some mill (worth every penny), Pique for like 5 mill, Keita at 14 mill, Yaya for 6 mill, Abidal for 11 mill, Milito for 15 mill, Henry for 17 mill, Eto'o for 19 mill, Deco for 15 mill etc etc

The mixture of homegrown players and transfer activity is just unmatched.  Yes, there was a year or two in there the Ibra/Eto's fiasco comes to mind but over that amount of time it's stunning what they did including IMO producing the best player ever.

And to LS, the only way I could see Simeone coaching Inter is if he just gets tired of trying to best Real and Barca year after year which really no team can do over a 38 game season consistently.  IF he was tired of the insanely small margin they leave for error in the league I could see him switching leagues.

I don't think anyone could blame him. I still think the Argentina job could be more attractive though.