Giuliano Simeone: Forging His Own Path at Atlético Madrid

The youngest of Diego Simeone’s sons has had to fight for every minute on the pitch — and now he’s making those minutes count.

A Birthday at the Metropolitano

Before the most important fixture Atlético Madrid had faced in a decade, the squad gathered around the centre circle at the Metropolitano stadium, forming a corridor for their manager. Diego Simeone jogged through the gauntlet they had created — from the goalkeepers at one end to the forwards at the other — while his players cheered and gave him celebratory slaps, though perhaps not with the full force reserved for a player’s turn. The applause rang out through the empty stands. Happy birthday, mister.

Tuesday marked Diego Simeone‘s 56th birthday. He has been part of Atlético Madrid for nearly two decades — first as the captain who delivered a league and cup double, then as the manager who secured the club’s next La Liga title 18 years later, and now as the man guiding them into his fourth Champions League semi-final and the club’s seventh European Cup last four, nine years after their previous appearance. “Buah! You can’t imagine how good it is to be among the four best teams in Europe,” he said after the quarter-final victory. Before the semi-final, he added: “I have no birthday wish — just pure gratitude to be with my three sons, my two daughters, my mother, my wife, and my lifelong friends.”

A Family Bound by Football

One of those sons was somewhere in the crowd, landing blows along with the rest. When Diego Simeone said farewell to the Vicente Calderón as a player in December 2004, he carried his youngest child — two-year-old Giuliano — in his arms. Years later, before returning to Madrid as manager in December 2011, he paused at a café in Mar del Plata and, over a croissant and a glass of milk, asked Giuliano, then eight years old, what he thought. “You’re going to coach Falcao?!” the boy exclaimed, before reality set in. “But… if it goes well, you won’t come back.”

It did go well, and he didn’t come back — but that turned out to be fine. Fourteen years on, Giuliano‘s father remains at the club, having outlasted every other manager in Spanish football history, and now his son is there alongside him. Born in Italy in December 2002, Giuliano grew up in Argentina with his elder brothers, though the family visited frequently and their father made trips back to see them. On matchday mornings, they would share meals “together” via an iPad. Football was the thread that connected them all — glasses rearranged on the table to represent formations, scraps of paper covered in tactical diagrams scattered throughout the house.

Childhood Memories and Early Influences

During the celebrations that followed Atlético‘s 2012 Europa League triumph, the manager was filmed in an animated phone conversation: “And did you see Falcao’s goal?!” On the other end of the line was Giuliano. The night Atlético lifted the Copa del Rey in 2013 was a school night — too late for the boys, really — but the brothers kept their usual ritual at home, scarves draped around the room. When Atlético won the Madrid derby in January 2015, a small ballboy with long hair and a white bib came sprinting along the touchline and launched himself into the manager’s arms. That was Giuliano.

As a ballboy, he was almost always stationed near the dugout, and yes, there were occasions when his father told him to take his time returning the ball when the team was ahead. He would come to training sessions at Cerro del Espino in Majadahonda, near the family home, and join in kickabouts. “It was crazy seeing the players up close,” he has said. “I always thought: imagine being out there — that would be mad.” After Falcao, his idol became Antoine Griezmann.

The Weight of the Name

Competition was fierce even within the family. “They would kick me, throw me to the floor, and if I cried, I couldn’t play with them any more — I learned to be tougher,” Giuliano said of his sessions with his brothers. Both siblings were talented enough to turn professional, and they suspected their younger brother would follow — just perhaps not to this level. He was 16 when he departed River Plate‘s academy and crossed the Atlantic to join Atlético’s youth setup, living with his father and watching him study formations every morning. When he turned 18, however, his father sent him out on his own; it was time to grow up. Now, his father is his manager and his childhood hero is his teammate.

That might sound straightforward, but it has been anything but — partly because it sounds easy. In a recent conversation with a television presenter, Giuliano admitted: “At times, it can feel strange to me, wondering what others might think.” When the presenter joked that the best approach is to speak even worse of the manager than your teammates do, the reply came instantly: “No doubt!” Giuliano acknowledged that this had weighed on him in his younger years, telling a radio station: “When I was 12, people said I was playing because I was my father’s son. I try to block that out. I know nothing will be handed to me.”

Proving Himself on His Own Terms

Simeone Sr once stated that signing his own son was something he could not do, given the complications it would create — the suspicion, the pressure. “I don’t want to say never, but…” he said. “It would be very difficult to have a son in the dressing room. Very difficult for him, for the relationship, for everyone.” That comment, however, was made about his eldest son, not Giuliano, and Atlético did not actually sign the younger son with any grand plan in mind. He was simply another academy product trying to make his mark.

In fact, he had to work harder than most. After loan spells at Zaragoza and Alavés, Giuliano suffered a broken ankle in 2023. His father rushed to his bedside, but the questions about his future extended beyond the injury itself, which he overcame through sheer determination. There appeared to be a reluctance on the manager’s part to smooth the path for his son. But Giuliano ended up clearing that path himself, with the same relentless drive that defines his father. He made himself impossible to overlook — even for his own dad.

A Winger Born to Run

Giuliano originally played as a centre-forward, but his grandfather believed the wing was where he would truly flourish, and so it proved: tearing down the touchline, veins visible in his neck, giving everything he had. “That Simeone, man… bloody hell,” said the coach who managed him at Alavés. “He runs for 90 minutes without stopping. He’s a pain. He’s got a very high level. He makes something out of nothing at any moment.”

“I see a player, not a son,” Simeone Sr has said. However proud he may be, he has been scrupulously careful not to speak glowingly about Giuliano even when he has done so for others — before facing Barcelona, he publicly told Griezmann: “I love you” — or even to acknowledge him. When his other son was at Rayo Majadahonda, who share Atlético’s training ground, father and son would arrive separately, sit separately, and leave separately. “Giuliano has a good relationship with his teammates — that’s what makes me happiest about our father-son journey,” the manager said.

A Legacy Earned, Not Inherited

He had to earn that relationship, just as he had to earn his place. When Giuliano returned from his loan spell, he started just one of the opening 11 matches. But when the opportunity came — largely because the manager had few other options — he seized it and never relinquished it, lifting the team’s performance in every game he played. No questions remain now, only a footballer who justifies every minute he receives and gives everything in return. And he gives a great deal.

Giuliano has a tattoo marking the date of his Atlético debut. The club is “the team of my life,” he says, and there is no reason to doubt it — a legacy passed down from his father, another bond between them, forged from the very beginning. Watch them together and you see it clearly: the same character, the same competitive fire, on either side of the touchline. Visit the club shop and ask for a No. 20 shirt, and it comes with “Giuliano” on the back, not “Simeone.” But that is his father’s name, Tuesday was his father’s birthday, and his father has everything he could wish for. “I’m not in a position to ask for absolutely anything — just to be grateful,” he said.