Atleti's Board of Incompetence
In Simeone's 12 odd years of managing our club we've seen a drastic rise in status, a sleeping giant finally awoken to heights it previously tasted in the top 3 of the division. However it's not come without it's challenges, Atletico Madrid despite it's coach can't and never really intended to compete financially with the other two giants of the league. While Atletico has pushed themselves to compete in all competitions they've failed to be a constant force to be reckoned with after the initial years of Simeone's reign. With consistent finishes at no lower than the top 3, reinforcement and restructuring has been woeful. We've seen elite talents from our academy come and go for huge fees, only to get replaced by relative mediocrity, or poor attitude has soured the team at large.
From the summer market of 2019/20 only two players remain(Hermoso, Llorente). Under normal circumstances this would be not too uncommon for clubs as constant rotations is normal, however this was a major rebuild year with most of the big hitters leaving that same summer:
Godin
Griezmann
Felipe Luis
Lucas Hernandez
Rodri
Juanfran
While it's hard to argue in the past 5 years if Hermoso has been a full success, for the money spent on him and his impact in the squad it's an easy yes. Llorente was bought as our DM and never truly fulfilled the role or was able to release Koke from his defensive duties, in fact he condemned even further back as time went on.
Even though these two succeeded, they are by no means good replacements for the original plan in mind; both Lucas and Rodri would end up winning the coveted UCL and have many other trophies like league titles under their belt, as well as national team success. Rodri went on to become the best DM in Europe and we were left looking for a replacement since then to January of 2024.
Vermeeren is a great signing but the timing is just about 5 years off, we needed a young dm prospect in that summer that Rodri left and even then, getting a prospect who doesn't speak the language is advisable to be done in the summer not in midseason. A question should come to mind however “Why would Atleti sell two youth players with high potential and long term plans in?” The answer is they didn't, their release clauses were triggered.
Release Clauses
I would say this is less of an Atletico issue and more of a Spanish problem, barring Real Madrid and arguably Barcelona(had to learn the hard way) very few clubs manage to find the line between keeping a player and allowing an avenue out for an extremely promising move assuming they even want that in the first place.
Most clubs very much including Atletico tend to put the release clause in a high return but approachable distance for a vast majority of their best players, we've seen this taken advantage of by a vast majority of premier league teams and some of the other big hitters in Europe.
Atletico has been in a unique position in Spain currently, where they have players that are very good and have some financial means to actually keep them out of other teams reach but unfortunately not enough to keep them all. This being the case there should comes a level of scrutiny when it comes to general squad management and building so to confirm which players to protect and what kind of contract to give to what players.
Contracts
Similar to the last problem this isn't an exclusive Atletico mishandling but I would say due to the position there was a lot of failure before any eventual success. When there was an influx of money with the money structure change of La Liga in 16/17 most clubs spent decadently and there are plenty of teams that would buy players at a rate comparable to current day premier league in terms of recklessness to try to get an age.
While the sums of money were considerably less than the current market, that's mostly to do with inflation and many clubs were and in some cases still are spending above their means. Atletico was typical then in that there was not much nearly as much forward planning with the players in the market with a much less restricted budget than was previously available.
This however did not stop at just transfers of players but also extended to a more dangerous part of the game in wage bill. While some players warranted a drastic boost in overall pay to deter potential moves away from the club, the lengthy contract extensions and consistent breaking of the wage structure would eventually pay it's toll. Atletico's wage structure would nearly double from 13/14 to 16/17 going from 49 million annually to 96 million, it would double in weight again in as many years with 18/19 having a 200 million being paid a year on the overall team.
Showing a steady and active increase in wages trying to match other top European clubs in hopes to move away from the previous "Selling Club" title they had during Simeone's earlier stint; Atletico has made it an active mission to lower the overall wage bill(successfully so far) especially post covid. There are still quite a few big contracts that we're paying for dearly to this day(Saul/Felix).
Long term plans
The Club after the 2015/16 season had a major opportunity on their hands upon Simeone staying, there was finally the chance to fully wake up the sleeping giant with a truly elite coach. Now it was on the board to focus, A small but important of things to be done:
Increase revenue
Revamp of the Stadium
Control of Media
Reinvigoration of the academy
This is a very hard list of things to do but a lot of it coincided with a plethora of outside factors that would drastically make the job easier, having two CL finals in 3 years means sponsors will line up to sign in to the Industry alongside the TV distribution change of La Liga previously mentioned.
The Vicente Caulderón held about 55 thousand seats and had an amazing home atmosphere, adding more seats and a potential roof is nice start to expansion however the club opted to create an entirely new stadium in the Estadio Metropolitano which currently holds 70 thousands seats. Atletico fans didn't take too kindly to this change, as the moving of stadiums alongside the simplified badge felt like gentrifying the identity of the club they had known all of their life. It did however bring in more revenue yearly.
Atletico was in earnest never truly going to make much ground with their media in comparison to Barcelona and Real Madrid as, in regard to football, they practically control any and all media. Most of the work done was attempting to gain more leverage outside of Spain via social media for international fans.
The Academy has had it's successes throughout the 12 year time period but there has been very few major or notable revamps in terms of the Atletico academy to talk about. Plans for a major sports complex outside of just football is currently underway and should be finished in 2025/2026 but just like most of the previous points, the timing is just woeful.
Academy
While we have not had a golden crop of players every year, there has been a complete lack of clear direction from the academy at our gems get poached by teams abroad, other times it's Real Madrid or Barcelona but there is much larger problem which is the lack of a clear path towards success and what that means. Is the end goal of an academy player in Atleti to become a first team player? Is it to get to La Liga and make money for the parent club? What is the profile of player or style of play that the academy wants to promote? All of these questions seem entirely confusing as the scatter shot approach to recruitment in youth signings and renewals is poor.
The biggest example of recent poor planning from Atletico is Javi Serrano. A defensive midfielder, a much needed position who also had constant showing in the various showings in youth levels for Spain. He only needed maybe a loan or two to get the proper nuances of midfield and game time that the first team could not afford to give him at the time.
He made his first start against Granada in the 2021/22 season and looked very good especially with Koke helping him in midfield, so his first loan that was chosen was to Mirandes. A team that is famous for being a first step for attacking talents not midfielders, he struggled to get game time and was then moved to Ibiza, a team which was already doomed to relegation(their best spell of football that season was with Serrano). Now on Loan to Sturm graz with an option to buy it seems clear the club gave up on his prospects and any first team chances.
The B team is not much better in earnest as many talents regress under the current coach of Luis Tevenet, many ending up leaving on loan to get minutes or leaving the club altogether. We make very little money in terms of sales from Academy due to the eventual stunting in growth and the players that seemingly do succeed tend to do so by not being in the B team for a long period of time. If you can't rely on Academy to mitigate costs, there comes a need to be very savvy in the transfer market.
Big Cost for a Big Failure
Atletico are no strangers to big money signings, the hit or miss record of said signings is however a very different argument as they very often fail to match the club’s valuation of the player.
As comes with time, inflation matters in the judgement of the prices here. Falcao’s 40m in 2011 is not at all comparable to Cunha or De Paul’s 35m in 2021, the 10 years have shown an entirely different landscape in terms of prices for players. Regardless of price this is not a list that inspires confidence towards big money signings.
Atletico made their biggest ever gamble with Joao Felix, the heir apparent to the departing Griezmann. On Paper it looked perfect, 21 g/a in his debut season for Benfica and a hattrick in the Europa League to kick it off; all he needed now was a platform for him to shine and it seemed Atletico was the perfect place for him. After an Absolutely immense Preseason, any and all doubts seemed to fly away as Atleti fans felt so assured of his success and what followed was beyond disappointing. Struggling to make 10 g/a a season, injuries, confrontations with Simeone and trying to force his way out of the club.
So this next section is mostly just the sheer amount of money used on this gamble so there’s going to be a lot of numbers, try to stay with me for a bit.
2019/20 127m euros with a 7 year contract:
Amortization rate of roughly 18.14m a year not including salary and potential bonuses, minimum payment of 3 years of amortization = 54.42m.
Signed contract extension in Jan of 2023 for one more year extending to 2027 after his approved loan to Chelsea, assuming this takes proper affect as soon as the contract is signed:
Atletico Madrid would have paid a total of 70.54m in the summer of 2023. The Amortization would have changed from 18.14m to 14.11m and would be roughly 16.12m paid that season.
Felix signed another contract extension in summer of 2023, extending till 2029, not sure if this is immediate effect or not but I will do act under the assumption it does. Assuming the second contract extension does take effect at the start of the 2023/24 season:
Joao's amortization would have changed from 18.14m over 7 more years to now be approximately 9.40mm over over the remainder of the 6 years on contract, for the total of 56.45m leftover.
In the summer(2024/2025) the total fee left to pay off would be ≈ 47m and if Atleti is to sell Joao in the coming summer that would be the minimum fee just to break even. Ideally getting more than that amount is for the best. His current market value on transfermarkt of the time of writing is 40m so even that isn't looking great.
Atleti did make 11m off of his loan deal with Chelsea, so I'm not sure how that reflects on the books but for the overall argument I assume it does nothing. Joao’s Salary is 6m net, Spain's current tax rate for player salaries is 50%, meaning while players receive 6m net, the club is playing close to 12m gross on a players salary.
Conclusion
I think it's a shame that our club has managed to get every other piece of the puzzle right, trusting the manager, trying to invest into the club and it's global image but fall short in so many other areas or for the most part be late.
I will commend Atletico's current investments but the club has wasted many years in which they could have challenged for major trophies and proper branding due to general incompetence. I hope they continue to look for high return, low cost players like Samu, Vermeeren and Mouriño while encompassing some of the academy talents at our disposal.
Hopefully as they free up expenses they can put more money into the brand that is Atletico Madrid and have money stored in the bank in case another problem arises, even though I doubt another global pandemic will happen again too soon.
There's a Chinese proverb that I think fully encapsulates this experience "The best time to plant a tree was twenty year's ago. The second best time is now". Hopefully moving forward we get to see the fruits of the Board’s labor.