Of all the footballers watching the European Super League intrigue unfold, Giovanni Simeone might even have been the one paying most attention, wondering if the dream that drives him would be denied. He hasn’t played in the Champions League, not yet, but it has literally marked him, after all.
“I was 13 when I got my first tattoo,” the Cagliari striker says. “You’re supposed to be 18, but I was such a fan of the Champions League that I got the logo done at 13. My dad didn’t want me to. And my mum said: ‘Why?’ I said: ‘Because the day I play and get my first goal in it …’” Simeone looks at the screen and pulls up his sleeve to reveal his arm, leaning towards it lips first. “‘… then I’m going to kiss the tattoo,’” he concludes, a smile stretching across his face. “I was 13, and my attitude was: ‘Europe, Europe, Europe.’”
For young footballers in Argentina, that desire is not unusual, but Simeone is. For him, Europe meant not just progress but finding his place and the fact he is a little different becomes clear over 90 minutes not just of football but astrology, history, architecture, meditation and more. Of identity, above all; a sense of self.
“Knowing a lot about football and nothing about anything else only takes you so far,” he says, yet football is his life too: one into which he was born, there for as long as he can remember. “My first memory is being on the pitch, getting elbowed in the face and a tooth fell out. The first tooth I lost. I was about five. I was lying on the floor and my mum and dad ran on to look for the tooth.” There is another big grin and he cracks up. “And they found it! Pérez the mouse [the equivalent of the tooth fairy] had to come.”
The dad running on to the pitch was, of course, Diego “El Cholo” Simeone. The game was in Italy, where Simeone Sr was playing for Lazio but within two years the family were moving again, returning to Spain for Simeone’s second spell at Atlético Madrid, the training ground barely 100 metres from the gravel pitches where Gio played for Rayo Majadahonda. “I still have the team picture in Buenos Aires,” he says. “I wanted to play in the middle like my dad and he said: ‘No, you go up front, you hit the ball hard.’ The goalkeepers were little and the goals were big, haha! So, he would say: ‘Shoot! Shoot!’
“We went back to Argentina but I always had that idea of getting back to Europe. I was born in Buenos Aires, but it was as if I was European. With time I realised Argentina is my homeland, but deep inside Europe felt close. That’s not just football, that’s the life I lived which made me European and South American together.” It is a life inherited, especially the football, running through the family. Gio has just returned from watching his youngest brother Giuliano play for Atlético Madrid B, while Gianluca is at third-tier Ibiza.
He recalls little pieces of papers scattered all over the house, tactical notes. He can see his dad pushing plates around the dinner table – “You go round and he’s moving glasses about and you’re saying: ‘Dad, there’s an app, you’re out of date’” – and watching training sessions, learning from players. “Teo Gutiérrez, Mandzukic, Villa, Abreu, but the one who really captivated me was Radamel Falcao. I’d always ask my dad about him and watch what he did, how he tied his boots, every little thing.”
All the while he made his path, even if too often it wasn’t seen as his own. “When I reached the first division in Argentina, they started to call me ‘El Cholito’, little Cholo. Or: ‘Simeone’s son’. I became defensive. I’d say: ‘I’m not El Cholito, I’m Giovanni Simeone, nothing more.’ I tried to show I’m playing because I can play not because of who I am. Because I score goals, because I want to get to Europe. To start with, that weighed on me.
“It’s hard for the dads, too. There’s a tension; they’re aware of that feeling that their sons can never match them. I scored goals, progressed, got to the first team, but it was as if – and I’m talking about my own feeling on the inside – it wasn’t enough.
“There’s a different social context, too. In the youth system at River, I was with kids who really didn’t have enough to eat. The difference was big. I tried to demonstrate that I was just another kid trying to make it just like them, but that was hard. At first the group didn’t accept me because of who I am. They’d say: ‘Why do you play football if you have plata [money]?’ A lot of them played because of the money; it was a way out for their families. It was my passion, theirs too, but they had family, agents, people saying to them: And plata and plata and plata.
“Some end up believing they’re playing [only] for the money, so they make it to the first division and that’s it, done. That’s because as kids they’re in a world where they’re hearing: plata, plata. They had that pressure, those demands, a pressure I really didn’t have.
“I played because I enjoyed it and didn’t really feel like I had something until I came to Europe at 22. As a kid, I didn’t realise what I was doing. At Rayo [aged nine] I got 30 goals in 20 games and people said ‘it’s incredible’ but I had no idea. At River, about 15, my granddad came to watch. Afterwards, he said: ‘Gio, I’m going to tell you something I told your dad a long time ago: you’re going to play in the first division.’ Later you look back on that and think it was a significant step towards becoming a footballer but at the time I just thought: ‘That’s nice, it feels good.’ I hadn’t achieved anything yet. My objective was: ‘Play in Europe, play in Europe.’”
Genoa called, then Fiorentina and Cagliari, 50 Serie A goals followed. Not that there was a plan as such, and he admits Italian football wasn’t a natural fit. “It’s very tactical: this piece moves, so that one has to, like chess. I also had to learn to play back to goal, the opposite of my game. I always said: ‘I’ll play here for year, then go somewhere I can play differently.’ And every year I say the same thing … and it’s five years.
“I didn’t plan that, but life has different ideas. Things happen because the universe, energy, takes you somewhere,” Simeone says. No sense asking about the next step then, the inevitable question about going to Atlético or to England one day? “You have to be ready for whatever comes: he who survives is he who adapts, not he who plans. But I would like to, yes. I always told my old man that the best football now is English football. I also think it’s a football where I could really make the most of my qualities, it’s very attractive, a place I’d like to try; maybe I’d fit in.
“My old man never said don’t be a player or do be this. He gave me the freedom. As a kid, my old man was my idol: every son wants to be like his dad. And I love football. You leave a lot behind, but if you have the passion, you do it.”
And if you hadn’t? And what comes after the game? “I studied fitness coaching. But there’s so much else. I’d love to study the stars. I like history, reading, documentaries, biographies, psychology. It’s good to have other things. I like to fish, to walk, meditate. You ask: are there other players like this? Well …”
Simeone cracks up. “No, the truth is I can’t think of any. People say: ‘Ah, do you meditate for football?’ And I think: ‘No, well, yeah, it helps the football. But I do it because it makes me feel good. There are teammates who’ve been through a bad time and they call. ‘Tell me how to meditate. What do you do to feel better?’
“Football goes by quickly. Not football, life. There are 24 hours in a day and that time slips away without realising. You pick up the phone and half an hour has gone. Imagine when you stop playing … I stay out there on the training pitch and the kit man comes out and say: ‘Aren’t you going?’ ‘Nah, leave me out here, I’m having fun.’ It’s what I always wanted, where I wanted to be. I’ve only got 10 years left; at 35 it’s over. Let me enjoy this.”
