When the team sheets landed, it looked like Diego Simeone might have thrown his bottomless reserves of menacing caution to the wind.
Atletico Madrid lined up to face Chelsea in the Champions League with Angel Correa and Joao Felix either side of Luis Suarez in attack.
Marcos Llorente – a goalscoring revelation from midfield both this season and, famously, at Anfield at the same stage of the 2019-20 tournament – was at right wing-back, with Thomas Lemar arguably an even more offensive option on the other flank.
Hold onto your hats or, at the very least, your dark overcoats.
By half-time, Atleti had managed no shots on target and one attempt on goal overall.
Despite inviting mirth such as that immediately above, Simeone’s men did not start by manning the barricades.
Joao Felix scampered into a first-minute dribble, drawing a foul that saw Mason Mount collect the quickest booking in this season’s Champions League and a ban for the second leg.
Goalkeeper Edouard Mendy’s heavy touch nearly gifted a goal to Saul Niguez before Suarez mugged Kurt Zouma near the right byline and Lemar could not slide home the cross.
Those were uncomfortable moments for Chelsea, but they soon started to feel at home in a dubious ‘away’ game at Bucharest’s Arena Nationala.
Thomas Tuchel has already stamped his mark all over this Blues side and they attempted 403 passes before the interval, over 100 more than any of Atletico’s previous opponents in the first half of a Champions League game this season.
Atletico found themselves nudged, prodded and manoeuvred back into a familiar shell.
Jorginho became Joao Felix’s latest victim, bringing down the Portugal forward to earn a caution and a ban, but Simeone talking himself into a yellow card after that moment of encouragement for his side suggested a state of fraught high-alert.
6 – Olivier Giroud has scored six goals in his last four UEFA Champions League appearances, as many as he had netted in his previous 16 games in the competition. His six goals in the competition this season marks his best return to date. Overhead. pic.twitter.com/YxTeO57SCv
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) February 23, 2021
The Atleti boss paced in agitated fashion as he waited for the VAR decision that overturned an offside decision and awarded a splendid away-ish goal to Olivier Giroud – replays showing Mario Hermoso deliberately played the ball before the centre-forward’s expert overhead kick.
Even when forced to chase the game, Atletico did not necessarily look more likely to score. Timo Werner tore forward on the break and thrashed into the side netting shortly after Joao Felix had been surprisingly removed.
Simeone has won deserved praise for loosening the shackles of his ridged 4-4-2 to embrace a more flexible 3-5-2 alternative this term. It was a switch that saw Los Rojiblancos rack up a commanding lead in LaLiga.
However, their most recent clean sheet is now eight matches ago and their domestic advantage has dwindled on the back of one win in four.
As Tuchel’s Chelsea impressively kept them at arm’s length, Atletico looked like a team dangerously caught between two stools at a terrible time to be in such a predicament.
Like in last season’s quarter-final defeat to RB Leipzig, the favourite’s tag weighed uneasily on Atletico – who are second only to Barcelona in terms of goals scored in LaLiga this season – and they became a more limp attacking proposition as the match wore on. Mendy concluded the 90 minutes untested.
Seemingly without the devilment of old, they were unable to drag Chelsea down to slug it out in the trenches with them. The Premier League team were an assured, moving target with no interest in grappling, much to Suarez’s clear disappointment.
Simeone’s best teams sometimes felt like they were nothing but edge and Atletico quickly need to rediscover some as a tough trip to Villarreal and a seemingly pivotal Madrid derby lie in wait. Maybe they will be relieved to have their backs to the wall once more.
Source: By SoccerNews
