Diego Forlan has been the toast of Atletico Madrid after instigating his side’s sensational comeback victory over Barcelona at the weekend.
In an interview with Cadena SER programme ‘El Larguero’ last night, the Uruguayan spoke at length about various subjects, and the main focus, aside from his heroics against the Blaugrana, was on two of the coaches he used to work under: the recently dismissed Atleti trainer, Javier Aguirre, and the long-serving Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.
“I always had a good understanding with Aguirre. When he left, we all wished him good luck and told him we would not have any problems playing for his team in the future,” Forlan began.
“But the problem was that the results weren’t there and we had a horrible month in January and his relationship with the press started to collapse and it is always easiest to dismiss the coach when things are going bad.”
The 29-year-old then reminisced about his unsuccessful two-and-a-half year stint under Ferguson at Man United.
“I was very young back then [22 years old] and I was in a team full of great players, even more than what they have now. Because I did not play a lot, I grew frustrated as I wasn’t able to improve,” he admitted.
“I played more in my final year but Ferguson still did not use me as much as I wanted to. But he’s not as strict as people say he is. I had a great relationship with him and he allowed me to join Villarreal even though he admitted it was not a good time for me to leave the team.
“But he let me go because he wanted to reward me for my professionalism and he even apologised for not giving me enough chances. When I was playing the Champions League semi-final [with Villarreal] against Arsenal, he called me to wish me luck and he gave me an insight into our opponents.”
Finally, the former Pichichi winner talked about his wonder goal against Barca which sparked his team's come-from-behind 4-3 win.
“It is one of those goals where you dream of scoring especially against a rival like Barcelona. As soon as their goalkeeper [Victor Valdes] was beaten, I knew it was going in. It wasn’t a very powerful shot, but I struck the ball good and clean,” he described.
Forlan and Atletico will attempt to continue their resurgence when they take on Real Madrid this Saturday.
KS Leong, Goal.com