Simeone admits he's been delighted with the way his team turned their season around over the past month.
Locker room:
"I'm not surprised at all, I'm not expecting surprises but realities. The reality is that we have to train in the best way, compete to be better as a team, and with more competition between them, the team always wins. This is what we have to keep pushing for. Many players have been here for many years and they know what the path is."
Rotations:
"We have the motto 'wearing the Atlético shirt in every game is a great opportunity'. Many would like to be in our place and we need to have this absolutely embedded within us. From there we will make a team to try to hurt a Cacereño that does very well at home and that will compete as it did against Madrid. I can't imagine anything else from what we saw in the videos."
The team he wants:
"We have things to improve, the team grows from a block and I always call that block a team, neither offensive nor defensive. From there, we need that consistency, which is the most difficult thing to maintain during the season."
Clean sheet:
"There is no team that wins the championship by conceding so many goals. They usually have either the least number of goals conceded or the second-best. A team that concedes so many goals rarely wins. From there we build on the work we have been doing for a long time."
"He has different characteristics. He reminds me of Koke when we started down this path that we've been on, a winger who works on the wing, a scorer on the inside, a player who can score goals, who creates numerical superiority through his work and his recoveries... He has many things. And he also works defensively on the wing like he does. I hope he can maintain it. Lino and Riquelme have other characteristics, more of a winger."
Improvement after crisis talks:
"During the match we vary the system quite a bit depending on what is asked of us: sometimes with two at the back, sometimes with three, sometimes with six... We needed time for the new players to adapt and, from then on, the individual growth of the players who contribute to the collective has helped us. I hope the team holds up; that is the most complex thing."