A 2014 photo of Diego Simeone seated beside a smiling young Giuliano resurfaced after Atlético Madrid’s first-leg win over Barcelona. On Tuesday night, that image stopped feeling like a memory and started reading like a marker of time. Atlético named Giuliano in the starting XI for the second leg of the Champions League quarterfinal, carrying a 2-0 lead into one of the club’s most important European nights in recent years.
That setting gives the father-son angle real weight. Diego has been Atlético’s coach since 2011, and his reign has included Champions League final appearances in 2014 and 2016. The competition has remained the grand test of his era, and Atlético have not been back to a Champions League semifinal since 2017.
Diego built the stage years ago. Giuliano is no longer watching from the side of it.
He had already shaped the tie in the first leg. Pau Cubarsí was sent off for a challenge on Giuliano, Julián Alvarez buried the free kick before halftime, then Alexander Sørloth added the second goal in a 2-0 win. Giuliano also started that match, which means this quarterfinal did not suddenly become his story on the return leg. He had already helped bend it.
The route into this moment was not as simple as his surname might make it appear. Giuliano joined Atlético’s academy in 2019, scored 24 goals in 36 matches for Atlético B in 2021-22, made his first-team debut in April 2022, then spent time on loan at Zaragoza and Alavés before returning to the senior squad. During the Alavés spell, he suffered a fractured fibula, a dislocated ankle, and syndesmosis ligament damage that required surgery. In January, Atlético extended his contract through June 2030.
More than a surname
Giuliano has spoken plainly about the burden attached to the name. He has said that once training begins, his father is the coach and he is the player. He has also spoken about hearing as a child that he only played because he was Diego Simeone’s son, and about trying to shut out that noise and focus on growing and improving. That is the part of the story worth holding onto. Not sentiment, but separation. Not inheritance alone, but the work required to make inheritance irrelevant.
Diego has addressed the issue in similar terms. In January, after Giuliano’s renewal, he said the new deal was deserved and reflected serious personal work from a player operating in a difficult place, that of being the coach’s son. That line matters because it shifts the frame away from family symbolism and back toward merit.
A child once sat beside his father during Atlético’s Champions League years. Now, at 23, he is listed in the XI with a semifinal place on the line.
Diego’s story in Europe is already established. Giuliano’s is only beginning, and that is what makes the image feel larger now than it did in 2014.
