Diego Simeone aimed a thinly-veiled dig at Pep Guardiola on a feisty and bad-tempered night at the Wanda Metropolitano on Wednesday, where Manchester City’s advance to the semi-finals was overshadowed by a brawl on the pitch and in the tunnel.
Simeone was asked after the match if he felt Guardiola had disrespected him during the quarter-final, which City won 1-0 on aggregate after a goalless draw in the second leg.
“Often people who have a great vocabulary, who are very intelligent, they can praise you with contempt. But those of us with a little less vocabulary, we are not stupid either,” Simeone said.
After the first leg Guardiola said “in pre-history, today and in a hundred thousand years, attacking a 5-5 (formation) is very difficult”, which was taken by some to be a criticism of Atletico’s defensive style.