Diego "Cholo" Simeone, has become obsessed with scoring goals. He is acutely aware that one of the reasons that let his side down on occasion in the 2014-15 season, was their lack of scoring goals in key fixtures. Simeone has been working with added vigor focusing on goal scoring. In yesterday’s morning training session in Saga, once again the coach dedicated a huge amount of his time working with the club’s strikers. They were put through their paces with shots from both inside and outside the area and the Argentinean coach is keen to encourage his player (Griezmann, Raúl García, Torres, Gabi …) to shoot on target when they are faced with an opportunity. If they can advance with the ball to the box, even better but the focus from the coach is for his players to finish off a move with a shot on goal. This new philosophy will be implemented in today’s third pre-season game for the Madrid side. Today’s opponents are Sagan Tosu, a J-League side, currently lying 11th in the Japanese domestic league.
A win and decent performance would go some way in extending the good image of La Liga and in this case of Atleti in Japan. Simeone will demand goals from his side after the extensive work that has been inverted in this aspect of the team. As the team trained yesterday and repeated attacking drill time after time Cholo exclaimed: “We’ll keep at this until, we get it right, and I’m the most patient person in the world”.