Antoine Griezmann (2) and Julian Alvarez struck for the 3-1 win on Wednesday night, with Simeone delighted with the performance.
Top 8:
"I'm happy with the team's work. They've put in a lot of effort. We've played three games in six days and the response has been very good and it's normal that we were left without freshness. There are two games left, Leverkusen is one of the best and we'll see how far we can go.
"Today's game was important to us, we needed to get points, which were very important, and to continue in that dynamic it was very important to win. From then on, the effort was what was evident. In the second half, we controlled it beyond that penalty that created some difficulty, the players managed it very well and we won a game that was very important to us."
Ten consecutive victories with De Paul as the key:
"With Rodrigo we always knew he had the talent he had always shown in Argentina and at Atlético he had moments to improve. Now he is showing it here too, but he is an important player because he is different, he has the goal, he has that final pass and he works hard. When a player has these characteristics he makes us a better team."
Change of results:
"It's football and there are good and not so good moments. There are difficult moments and others that lead you to be good. We have to try to improve as we are doing."
Little rest:
"I imagine that everyone needs to rest and would not like to play as tightly as we had to. We played on Thursday in Cáceres, we played on Sunday at nine and now on Sunday we will play at two when it could have been at nine because we will play on Saturday against Barcelona. But nobody cares."
A team capable of dominating every situation and confidence in the team:
"I don't want to give points, I'm talking about the team's awareness. The game against Cacereño was difficult for us, against Vic too, against Paris we had to suffer and we could have won. All the games have been different and the team is responding. Hopefully we can continue to show that."
The sons of both coaches on the pitch:
"If the coach had chosen to put the player on, he didn't think about putting his son on, and the same thing happened to me. Neither of us look at him as sons, we do it as footballers."
Candidates to win the Champions League:
"Dreaming big means dreaming about the next game and game by game, knowing that we are in a league in which we compete with Madrid and Barcelona, in the Cup we can also meet them and in the Champions League we can also meet them. We are in LaLiga where there are two that are very good."