Diego Simeone and His 50,000 Friends

The connection between Atlético Madrid coach Diego Simeone and the fans at Atleti's Calderón stadium is real. When the Argentine skipper was absent from the sidelines earlier this season, serving a suspension for cussing out a referee, the fans in the stadium's south end held up a banner: "Cholo, tú con nosotros, nosotros contigo." You with us, us with you.

It's nothing new for a successful manager to be cast in bronze by fans, but what goes on between atléticos and Simeone is unusual. The reverence for him is rooted in a perception that he understands them; as if one day, a chant they were singing took human form, slicked its hair back, and squeezed itself into a slim-fitting, all-black suit.

The most well-regarded coaches are often distant figures—an idealized paterfamilias like Alex Ferguson, or a difficult genius like Pep Guardiola. Cholo isn't like that. He has a way that makes the people around him—even those in the cheap seats, or at home watching their televisions—feel included. He possesses a strange kind of warmth, which is no mean feat for someone who is also a perpetually armed emotional landmine.

The conventional wisdom has always been that Simeone is not long for Atlético Madrid. He would burn out, or leave for a bigger club. But after three years in charge, he signed a new contract on Tuesday morning that runs until 2020. The terms of the deal are undisclosed, but it's safe to assume he's received a sizable pay bump and something like complete control over player transfers. Atleti are giving him all they can. While they can't provide the financial resources of a Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain—two clubs that were reportedly courting Simeone—they can be a home to him. Enduring admiration is generally not a reason coaches stay in their jobs, but it must count for something.

It's worth mentioning that Cholo is Jesus in a junkyard. If Atleti were not born in sin, they have been soaking in it for decades. The club was bought illegally by movie producer Enrique Cerezo and the all-around schmuckish Gil family in 1987 and hasn't been anything close to stable since. (Cerezo and the Gils also developed a habit of not paying hundreds of millions of euros in taxes.) They chewed through 48 coaches between purchasing the club and December of 2011, when they brought in Simeone, who won the league double as an Atleti player in 1996. It was a populist choice, and a cynical one. Cholo was inevitably going to manage Atleti at one point or another, and he was called to duty in order to satiate fans who absolutely hated the decision to hire the overmatched and demonstrably blowing it Gregorio Manzano, who was canned after seven incompetent months. Atleti's directors don't deserve much credit for picking out Cholo, given their track record. They made a desperation call to a club legend who just so happens to be a great coach.

Simeone is staying at Atleti in part because of the newfound semi-stability that he himself has created there. Success breeds success in soccer, in large part because success generates money. Cholo took over a talented but underachieving, mid-table Atleti squad and nearly took them to the Champions League in half a season. The following year, Atleti finished third in La Liga and won the Copa del Rey over their city rivals Real Madrid. In 2013-14, they miraculously won the league and came within a couple minutes of triumphing in the UCL final.

It's crass, but the most important thing Simeone has brought to the club, in terms of its long-term health, is the cash netted from his teams' performances. Champions League qualification—and, on top of that, a deep tournament run—provides the sort of revenue that can help a club keep its best players and sign new ones. Atleti lost three crucial starters this past summer. The exodus could have been much more drastic. It's tempting to say Cholo's force of personality kept the rest of the squad intact, but more likely, it was the numerous contract improvements Atleti were able to offer to players who might have otherwise moved on.

The other, possibly uglier reason Simeone renewed his commitment to the club is Wang Jianlin, who bought a twenty percent share of Atleti this past January for €45 million. In addition to this injection of funds, the Chinese billionaire also intends to market Atlético Madrid to his countrymen, which could bring in ocean liners full of yuan from merchandise sales alone. Wang claims he invested in the club because he loves soccer and has a desire to spur its popularity in China, which might be true. It's definitely true that his company, the Dalian Wanda Group, bought a skyscraper in Madrid for €265 million last year, so there might be some ulterior motives involved. Wang is rich in a way that puts his finger in all manner of pies, but his primary expertise is in property development. Atleti are going to move into a refurbished stadium in the fall of 2016 or 2017. It wouldn't be surprising if Dalian Wanda got the right of first refusal on any future construction projects near the new ground.

This is all exhausting and shady and not something to feel altogether good about, but it is, lamentably, the way business is done. No club in La Liga, except maybe Eibar, is clean. Atlético Madrid is run by thieves and a foreign billionaire whose intentions are not yet clear. That registers as maybe a seven or eight on Spanish soccer's crookedness scale. At least they're finally paying the Spanish government those back taxes.

Simeone can't root out any of Atleti's institutional wretchedness, but he apparently has a unique talent for navigating it. He has worked beautifully within the club's limitations and around its various dysfunctions, and seems to do so mostly by looking right through them. As Atlético Madrid grows through the awkward phase of its process towards mature global brand-dom, all Simeone sees are more resources coming. Things he can build with. Maybe it's this tunnel vision that keeps Cholo sane. It definitely helps him do his job.

He's a broader thinker than he lets on, but Simeone has repeated the cliché that his team must take things game by game so many times that he has elevated it to the status of a proverb. Partido a partido. It's prosaic in the extreme: concern yourself with what is in front of you; do what you can. A man needs that sort of simple philosophy to work for Atlético Madrid and still sleep through the night. A man needs friends, too. Cholo's got 50,000 of them on any given evening, jet engine loud, singing his name. When he's on the sidelines, waving at the stands like a muscular heron, applauding their applause, he is with them and they are with him. In the moment, this is all that matters.