Atletico Madrid v FC Barcelona - UCL RD8

Atletico Madrid v FC Barcelona - UCL RD8

Both legs will be discussed in this thread.

Leg 1 - FC Barcelona - Atletico Madrid | 2-1 (Suarez x2, Fernando Torres)
Leg 2 - Atletico Madrid - FC Barcelona | 2-0 (Griezemen x2)

Last time Barcelona faced Atletico Madrid in the Champions League was during the quarterfinals of the 2013-2014 season. Atletico Madrid advanced 1-2 over 2 legs.

The first leg will be played at the Camp Nou, exactly 3 days days after playing Real Madrid (also at the Camp Nou). Atletico have only lost once in La Liga at home (against Barcelona) : also lost at home to Benfica at the UCL group stage, and also to Celta de Vigo in the Copa Del Rey. With only those loses, Atletico has one of the best home records in Europe, as well as one of the best defenses in all of Europe but on occasion struggle to score.  

Record vs Atletico Madrid this season in La Liga : Barca 2 - Atletico 1 (W), Atletico 1 - Barca 2 (W)

Offensive/Defensive stats in La Liga + UCL (as of March 18th)
FC Barcelona : 84 for - 22 against (La Liga)
Atletico Madrid : 45 for - 12 against (La Liga)

FC Barcelona : 20 for - 5 against  (UCL)
Atletico Madrid : 11 for - 3 against (UCL)

Total: Barca 104 - 27 vs Atletico 56 - 15

I am Not getting gud feeling about it. Two legs is too much with shitty away goal rule

Demanding tie cause Atleti run a lot but they suit our style so that should be a smooth win.

Real Madrid getting them heated up balls again. Hope we get them next round and whoop there sorry asses.

My prediction is 3-0 at CN and 1-2 at the Vicente Calderon.

Atletico has Godin and probably Gimenez out. We should win...

Even if they manage to make it ugly and prevent us from scoring a crazy amount of goals; I just don't see them having enough of a goal scoring threat to worry us.

I believe Neymar will be key today. He needs to be more active and keep the defense busy. Suarez is always doing something and so is Messi (hopefully he gets his positional play right by not getting in anyone's way) but I have felt that Neymar needs to do more off late.

I feel like even though Neymar doesn't score as much as Suarez and Messi, that his off the ball runs and constant atacking and taking on players (even if it doesn't work), helps to do so much to get Suarez and Messi free and going. Suarez is the one that needs to put his chances away, he is very hit or miss but is at least good at always making sure he is in a good place to at least give himself a shot. If Messi is rested and good I feel he will be man of match.

Atletico won big this weekend have a lot of confidence, so I don't expect this match to be easy at all

windkick wrote:I feel like even though Neymar doesn't score as much as Suarez and Messi, that his off the ball runs and constant atacking and taking on players (even if it doesn't work), helps to do so much to get Suarez and Messi free and going. Suarez is the one that needs to put his chances away, he is very hit or miss but is at least good at always making sure he is in a good place to at least give himself a shot. If Messi is rested and good I feel he will be man of match.

Atletico won big this weekend have a lot of confidence, so I don't expect this match to be easy at all

Very true. I didn't see Neymar running too much in behind the defense in the classiso so I'm just hoping it was due to jet lag. Don't want him to stop a very crucial part of his play.

Actually very scared about this performance following our Clasico performance.

One could say we were "saving it" for this game though, so we'll see. Personally, I like having good performances preceding a big game. We've had the better of them recently and they don't have a lot of attacking firepower, but I'm still somewhat scared. Atletico can always up their game up a notch for games like this.

Interesting to see both teams in away colors

Soo, kicked out of CL by Atleti twice?

Jesus...

THis is why i thought LE should have kept all the players in Vilareal game and keep the advantage. We would have had 2 points more in league. PLay kids vs RM and have fresh legs for this game.

EDIT: this has disaster written all over it!

LOl at el Nino. What a dumbass

Atletico is about to blow a gasket here. They are loosing it

I dont see us turning this game unless Atleti loose one more player LOL

I would take 1-1 gladly the way we are playing

Having a CL GK who doesn't play regular football is not sustainable.

Seems its just neymar and iniesta playing this game right now

Neymar is amazing.unlucky not to score

I wouldn't look too much into this or the real madrid game.

team needs rhythm and more importantly rest after the national team break

hopefully this weekend we either rest the major stars (unlikely) or we win without getting passed second gear.

Gud second from Barca though I wish we would have scored one more goal and finish it right here. But it's gud score imo. What is heartening to see is MSN getting into action.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Having a CL GK who doesn't play regular football is not sustainable.

Agreed, it simply doesn't make sense.

Poor performance that was bailed out by Torres being an idiot. We won but if it's 11 vs 11 I'm not so sure we win this one. Maybe draw.

Not a terrible result for Atletico and if we play like that again, I could see us going out.

Suarez invincible overall but still man of the match
Neymar great 30 minutes in second half then faded
Messi is off form.looks exhausted like hell needs at least 1 week of rest
Busquets was bad
Iniesta was above average
Rakitic was good
Defense looked slow and disorganized

Overall team looks exhausted.they raised their game 30 minutes or so but then again became sloth

Rakitic is the only one looks his oldself with energy.others needs rest and then some 5-0 win against some scrub to get back in rhythm. they are in bad condition mentally and physically