Atletico Madrid v FC Barcelona - UCL RD8

CBarca wrote:Waiting for Alex's analysis on Messi coming into the middle again.

IMO we can't afford to have it happen in LE's team. Again he's come into the middle and we've made nothing from it. However, it was always going to be incredibly difficult to create no matter what when Atletico went up by one

To be fair I think nearly everyone agreed that if Messi played centrally then someone else should take up that space, which didn't seem to happen today. Alves is no longer good enough to cover for his absence. Today he did not only play centrally, he also played slightly deeper than Iniesta according to whoscored's average positions.

That being said Messi has played RW against Atleti before so I don't think this is his call but LE's, unless people seriously believe in coachessi?

BarrileteCosmico wrote:

CBarca wrote:Waiting for Alex's analysis on Messi coming into the middle again.

IMO we can't afford to have it happen in LE's team. Again he's come into the middle and we've made nothing from it. However, it was always going to be incredibly difficult to create no matter what when Atletico went up by one

To be fair I think nearly everyone agreed that if Messi played centrally then someone else should take up that space, which didn't seem to happen today. Alves is no longer good enough to cover for his absence. Today he did not only play centrally, he also played slightly deeper than Iniesta according to whoscored's average positions.

That being said Messi has played RW against Atleti before so I don't think this is his call but LE's, unless people seriously believe in coachessi?

Right and I mean Messi coming centrally isn't a problem and can even work to our benefit (and has done historically!) in outnumbering the opposition in midfield and creating ourselves a numerical advantage. Perhaps the best example from this season is the 4-0 against Madrid with Roberto occupying Messi's space on the right, and it worked brilliantly. Obviously, Rakitic usually occupies this role and does decently (with Alves managing to get up as he usually does).

But that makes sense against Madrid. Against Atletico, especially after they've gotten a goal, we don't really have a need for midfield dominance. Atletico aren't looking to control the midfield battle, they simply want numbers back. That's not to say that Messi dropping in centrally occasionally to help relieve against the Atletico press isn't a bad idea (their pressing in the midfield areas was excellent, often times), but that on the whole he HAS to stay wide. I'm shocked that we didn't do this more during the game--all of our best chances came from combination play out wide. Neymar, Alba and Iniesta combined a few times to create space for Alba to cross in from a decent position and if Alba wasn't trash we may have done better from that. We also managed to create a couple chances from our right side as well (Filipe Luis is a monster though, so that makes things more difficult).

Where did we never create a good chance from? Trying to penetrate through the middle, bar that one pass into Suarez that he did amazingly well with to hold off Godin and get a shot off. And yes if you get it wide Atletico are going to pack the middle and make it very difficult, but I think that was our best plan.

I think today, Rakitic was very limited for us. He didn't cope with Atletico's pressing particularly well, he didn't manage to create any sort of meaningful impact on the right, and I don't remember him doing much of anything at all when he was on the field. Sergi Roberto came on and had more impact imo. I think we really, really missed Xavi today.

I think Simeone got his tactics spot on. Totally cut off MSN from the game.

We tried to build up from the back, but their pressing was amazing. We were able to break that press only sometimes. This is one of the differences between LE's setup and earlier setups. Our midfield was starved of the ball. While Busquets was highly pressured, neither Rakitic or Iniesta could drop deep to advance the ball.

Messi dropped deep at times, but that defeated the entire purpose: now he's in our half and leaves only Suarez & Neymar up front. Atleti in effect cut off the supply from our midfield. Would never have happened if Xavi was there tbh. But then again, if Xavi is there then we get a different brand of football and that has its own drawbacks.

That's why we ended up resorting to long balls out of the back, which were hit & miss. I am confident that had the ball reached the front enough number of times, Suarez could have made something of it.

They marked Neymar very well and on his part he didn't have that good a game anyway. In the very little that Suarez saw of the ball, he was good. Messi, I am confused about. He came to the center, yes. But would having him at the right really have changed anything? Not sure.

Overall, I hope LE learns from this. It was different from the Madrid & Sociedad defeats. Both of them had crowded the midfield & the tactics were different.

This match though, I believe shows a chink in the strategy of MSN. We need a midfielder who can successfully transition from the defense to attack. Iniesta already has too much on his plate, and Rakitic doesn't offer that, or at least isn't instructed to do that.

LE likes his CM to be a workhorse (thus the signing of Turan). But for matches like these we need a different strategy in midfield. I hope LE acknowledges that.

And finally, full credit to Atletico Madrid. Will be rooting for Pep to win it though.

Gud post

FennecFox7 wrote:

nazimali12 wrote:not surprise fennefoC7 and valCRyja are celebrating. but they forgot that CL is a lottery and everything can change in a moment.if this happens to Barcelona it can happen to anyone

Omg, what did I even say to offend you

Didn't I just praise alves and defend iniesta to death in another thread

Please don't group me with valk, I love him but he's on a trolling rampage

Since when is the logical truth considered trolling ?

CBarca wrote:Valk has always been one of the more mediocre posters on GL tbh so this is nothing new

He's our equivalent of Harmonica except he doesn't have Harmonica's talent in statistics.

Great analysis from CM Pep. In the first half at least (I didn't watch the second) Messi stayed strictly on the right wing. I'm not surprised that he came inside in the second because it clearly wasn't working and he tends to do that when he gets frustrated. Regardless it makes little difference and I think the focus on MSN is illogical when they rarely saw the ball. The problem was clearly your inability to play through Atletico's press which is down to the midfield. There were stretches as long as 90 seconds where Barca was stuck in their third and couldn't get out for all their recycling of the ball and retreating.

This is simply because the defenders had no options to pass it to. The surest sign of fatigue is when off the ball movement stops and that's what I saw last night from the Barca midfield. If you can't get out of your third you can have Pele-Maradona-Vela (shoutout to Alex) up front and it won't matter.

Not that surprised but still surprised, to be outplayed by Atletico like this, its jsut not good enough. I really expected more from us Credit to Atletico, they really put of the performances vs us, ffs.... I expected them to tire eventually but they were very clever, usually teams that press us get tired, but they pressed and then parked and mixed it so very well. They are just physically machines and trained so hard to beat us I guess, while we just have not been performing and couldnt lift our performance or figure out another plan to beat them.

Not that surprised though, we've been outplayed but numerous teams lately, and really tbh Suarez magic has sort of hidden our weaknesses for a while and weve got away in some games with MSN magic....

sportsczy wrote:There's a reason nobody has won b2b CL titles... so I wouldn't read too much into it.  When you get to the top 6-8 teams in Europe... they can beat each other in a tie no matter what.  All it takes are injuries, suspensions, lack of form, fitness, etc.  Just a lot of things can (and do) go wrong at the end of the year.

As I mentioned after the clasico... Barca have a tendency to burn out their starting XI.  This is not something specific to Enrique.  It started a while back and it is a weakness of this style.  I've noticed that the intensity can't be kept for more the 60-65 mins and then spaces open.  Physically, a team can't keep up that pressing for an entire game.  Now imagine doing this every game with pretty much the same starting XI... it will catch up to you.  

This was a bit particular because Atleti did most of the pressing and sat back... so i don't think you can blame energy being spent during the game in this one.  The issue was that Barca lacked energy coming in and have been suffering from this for a bit now.

I'll add that, like Madrid, having an attacking trio that defend little really burns out a midfield because of the extra defending they have to do.  Rakitic, Busquets and Iniesta are just running out of steam.  That's one reason I'm not a big fan of having 3 strikers (most being prima donas) as a forward combo.

Anyhow, enough of my rambling lol.

Agree with this, and also with what Cbarca said....

Wolfsburg also lost Draxler for much of the second leg, their best player. vs Wolfsburg vs Ateltico are totally two different beasts.

But regarding MSN and midfield getting spent due to essentially non defending from the front three, Im not so sure how LE can chance this though? I know Neymar tried to help a lot and he has the energy, and so does Suarez and Messi at times, but essentially, we just often defend with 7 men.

Getting out of our third was only a problem in the first half though, and maybe the early part of the second half.

We spent the entire last 30-35 minutes in their final third of the field.

Actually Wolfsburg gave us problems because as I've said before, styles make games, not actual quality sometimes. They exposed our lack of team pressing and our holes in our midfield and defense with their fast attackers. Roma did the exact same thing but they messed up in front of goal.

To make up for our horribly imbalanced squad, everyone has been busting ass. We look like prime Leicester out there, but we're winning games.

Thanks Cruijff & Lucifer.

CBarca wrote:Getting out of our third was only a problem in the first half though, and maybe the early part of the second half.

We spent the entire last 30-35 minutes in their final third of the field.

Yes that's mainly because Arda for Rakitic slightly helped, and also Roberto on RW gave us a better outlet. Not to mention Pique went up ahead and Messi dropped completely central to help in advancing the ball.

Subbed out of games this season: Neymar (once), Suarez (none), Messi (twice) Last season: Neymar (12), Suarez (15), Messi (1) [sg,md]

The differential seems that back then we had Pedro who demanded some minutes. Clearly the subs are not good enough and we need to bring in a rotation player.

shocking as-well considering suarez only played half the season too that he got 15 subs.