Diego Simeone to lower salary at Atletico Madrid, remain until the end of his contract

Madrid: Diego Simeone would lower his salary by a significant amount which will enable him to stay at Atletico Madrid to complete his own contract.

Simeone will also lower his salary, the highest for a manager in the world, from €20m per year to €16.5m, in hope of doing his bit to mitigate the unexpected loss of income from European football.

Tough Season for Diego Simeone

Atletico Madrid’s season this time around has been a tricky one where in they were under performing and had lost out on European football for the Madrid side and were 5th in the league overall behind the big 2 of Barcelona and Real Madrid till the world cup break.

However since the World Cup, Los Colchoneros have moved back up the table from 5th to 3rd, and are the second-best team in La Liga over that period, behind their city rivals Real Madrid.

While in November it looked as if Simeone was increasingly unsure of how to get the best of his team, but appears to have found the formula once more in the second half of the season.

They are 9 games unbeaten in the league. In particular, Antoine Griezmann is playing some of the best football of his career. While timely performances from his teammates like Koke, Morata, and Depay is ensuring that Atletico does not gets derailed from the path to European qualification next season.

Smieone and Joao Felix situation

While this move by Simeone will be appreciated by the club, there is one issues that still remains unresolved. It is the tussle between the coach and his star forward Joao Fexlis.

As reported earlier this season, the Portuguese forward and the Argentine coach had some disagreements. Following which the Felix decided to leave the club for a short season loan to Chelsea. This was supposed to cool things out between the two parties involved.

Earlier it was also alleged that Simeone would leave the club at the end of the season. However, that doesn’t appears to be the case. Simultaneously there are some reports claiming that Felix has shown interest in a permanent move for the English club.

Hence, it will be interesting to see what will be the end game for both the player and the manager.