Barcelona VS Atletico Madrid

Im gonna watch the game later on, im currently reading the pBp. Was Busq having a bad game? I just saw Gomes was subbed on for him right after HT?

Messi off. Hopefully he gets the damn surgery. He needs to stop delaying the inevitable.

Messi just do the god damn surgery

Suarez gets off with a yellow in what could have easily been a red...

Pique getting the best chances in the last 30 minutes. If he only had Puyol's heading skills.

If only pique had more gel on his hair it proly would have been 2-1 to barca

Average game by team. It's very bad after RM draw we couldn't beat ATM to close the gap to 1 point. It will be tough to win the game if we don't take advantage after RM slip-ups.

Yet again it is proven that what we didn't need was to sign loads of rotational players that when called upon can't even beat Alavas, and offcourse are not good enough to play against Atletico Madrid.

Great game from Roberto again, if they press us, Roberto kills them dribling all the field.

windkick wrote:Im gonna watch the game later on, im currently reading the pBp. Was Busq having a bad game? I just saw Gomes was subbed on for him right after HT?

Busquets had the flu.

I wasNT able to watch the game fully becuase I had a lot if games on at the same time but from what I saw:

Repeating the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. Atletico play with a very narrow low block and they cede the flanks to Barcelona so they weren't to frightened when Barcelona got in very wide areas and crossed. Common sense, Barcelona have no tall players or serially good players bar perhaps Suarez in their front line. Even Pique isn't as good in the air as you would expect for someone his size.

Now of you want to beat Atleti you will have to do 2 things, stretch them very wide to create space through the centre, or if they remain compact, gain qualitative superiority through one vs ones vs their full backs. I can count on maybe one hand how many times Neymar got the ball and ran at Juanfran in one vs ones and that is when Atleti looked worried. Off the top of my head I remember a quick Suarez pass to the left flank releasing Neymar.

At the moment, Messi keeps dropping centrally and Suarez would shift right so that the pressing structure is retained, albeit not optimal. This has 2 effects, it allowed their cbs to come out and their midfielders just man make Messi. The only players Barcelona have who are press resistant wit back to goal are Iniesta, Busquets and to some extent Suarez when he is in the centre but he's out wide.

Messi kept receiving the ball and trying to run through them and was then immediately closed down by 3 to 4 players.  

The positional game that a Barcelona made famous and is known for was a most non existent and atm Barcelona are playing like Arsenal in her final third , no structure or common sense and just leaving it to the players to use intuition. The only time Barcelona has the structure to pass the ball and circulate it quickly is when they are building from the back but when the ball reached the final third...

I would have made Neymar and Messi play very wide and have Suarez pin the cbs back. This is what worked in Enriques first season. Messi stayed wide, Atleti tilted their shape to deal with him and this gave Suarez and Neymar space.

Messi's positioning has become a major issue for them in big games against the elite teams. I know he wants multiple touched of the ball but he needs to be a lot more strategic. Inb4 I am killed by Messi fans here.

Also on the goal conceded, Pique was more at fault for aggressively stepping up like that. Mascherano shouldn't have slipped but that was a mistake, Pique rook the risk and flopped when he could have stayed back and pinned correa or at least held him up allowing Mascherano time to get tighter.

People saying Mascherano isn't good defensively need to come off it. Barcelona can't and never have been able to defend in a conventional way that is why the structure has to be there to minimise these kind of incidents.

This is worrying, we struggle vs Atletico for a long time now its become the normal, whereas Real beat them most of the time, even though we beat Real obviously mostly....thats significant. Like rock scissors paper, its frustrating enough to see we get beat by them in the CL and then they get beat by Real, knowing that we can beat Real Lol.... but its really become the norm now

They just organize so well against us, defending to tightly. I remember the match features a screen showing all 10 Atletico outfield players compressing the defending zone into a 20*25M square. Its very effective vs us. Our goal came from a worked corner and not open play.

We improved in the sense they didnt create that many chances, so thats an improvement.

But god Ive had enough of Mascherano, he just makes too many fatal mistakes, and maybe hes aging but hes showing time and again he struggles vs top oppositions, out paced, out muscled, grrr. I really hope Umtiti can step up already.

I hope we work out ways to beat Atletico and do not struggle every time that we face them. 2 CL knock outs to them and a league title to them is enough ffs....

I'm sorry but I stopped reading after that first sentence. In the league, we have a vastly superior record past 5 years vs Atleti than what Real do. Real struggle vs them in the league but beat them in the Champions, while we are the opposite.

I think it's time people rate Atleti on Madrids/Barca's level. They are a top, top team (even if they are frustrating to watch)

Atletico is like a compact solid block of concrete that cannot be penetrated unless opposition have physical presence in box, which we don't except maybe Suarez. The key to their defence is they remain close to each other and defend in partnerships. Only proven way to penetrate them is to stretch them and separate them from each other which leads to spaces which can be used to infiltrate. We have done this better than anyone in world for majority of time now and have dominated them in recent seasons. So what's wrong now? I think the most important thing required to break up this probably the best defence in world is "tactical awareness". Yes positional awareness is the key here. U cannot have RW and LW roaming wherever they want, they should strictly remain positioned to the touchline and trust their teammates to get the pass. And therein lies our problem, Messi roams too much in center maybe because he doesn't trust this midfield to deliver the ball to him where he likes. That's the only explanation for what he does and hence he takes on himself to create chances.

You cant always win against a great team. Plus this great team parks the bus. This makes it twice hard to score against them
Pressing doesnt even matter.They dont need the ball.Press or not they give it away easily and defend about 70 minutes.
Tall striker will not do much. Atleti rarely concedes from header.Scoring with head is overrated anyway.A tall striker scores 4-5 headers in a season.
Barca have enough power to beat them.In many games they do so. But you cant always win
Why you expect Barcelona to win every single time against maybe second or third best team in the world? Isnt it ridiculous?

Atletico is not on Barcelona/RM level.

In the game they were compact at the back but really poor up front. Had Mascherano not slipped like the bitch he is, we would have won comfortably and we should have won.

Don't see how you can just like that say they are on Barca level after the last game. They were way worse in every area and it definitely did not look like an even contest.

They get lucky often with narrow wins but that doesn't mean anything.

If according to you defending deep and being overly aggresive puts them up with the likes of Barca who actually play beautiful football and never cowardly park an aeroplane before the goal then it's really sad from your pov

Correa was in a good position to score even if Masche had not slipped

Atleti are easily an elite team... and easily on anyone's level. They made 2 CL finals and a semi in the past 3 years. It's not even a question.

They play like a Serie A or Italy NT team. They are very disciplined, cover spaces like no other and like to draw the opponents in and hit them with counter attacks. It may not be pleasing to attacking football fans... but I find them incredibly good.

The tactic against Barca is not a new one... Barca always burns itself out in with the effort it takes to press after 65 mins or so. Atleti play compact for that period of time and then pass to the offensive when Barca leave spaces. Happened again this time. Madrid do the same thing to Barca. In fact, everyone tries to.

I thought a draw was a very reasonable result given the physiognomy of the game.

sportsczy wrote:I thought a draw was a very reasonable result given the physiognomy of the game.

The problem now obviously is that this has been going on for a long time now in many games between us and we havent be able to work out a proper game plan to counter them which is we havent been able to break their defense as much as we would like, of course they are probably the best team in the way with their game plan and their defending as a unit is perfect. But anything can be countered. I just hope Enrique and his teams works it out ASAP, otherwise it may cost us yet again, twice is enough, i cannot bear watching it a third time