Liverpool are like losing direction at the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium, Atletico Madrid headquarters in the first leg of the Champions League last 16, Tuesday (18/2). The Reds who usually always have a solution for every situation this time can not do anything.
This time, the port city team had to lift their hats to salute Diego Simeone’s tactics. The coach nicknamed El Cholo was making Jurgen Klopp’s squad deadlocked for 90 minutes.
Signs of Liverpool will lose in this match has emerged when the game has been running for four minutes. Atletico midfielder Saul Niguez managed to break into Alisson Becker’s goal.
Saul calmly struck the ball into the opponent’s goal after taking advantage of the opportunity from a corner. The Spaniard quickly responded to the wild ball in the penalty box.
After a quick goal from Saul, Atletico played more cautiously. Los Colchoneros continued to play aggressively but no longer dared to press too much.
The host focused on defending and playing long balls straight into the Liverpool defense. Atletico let Liverpool players have the ball.
The task of Saul et al only focused on ensuring that no single Liverpool player could freely threaten Jan Oblak.
The impression that appears as if the game is biased. Liverpool seem superior even though Atletico’s playing style is anti-strategy created by Simeone.
Simeone seemed to realize that attacking games were not their style. And, appearing offensive even in public against a team of Liverpool is tantamount to committing suicide.
The attacking game will create many empty gaps in the back line of the Spanish capital team. This would make it easier for Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, until Roberto Firmino scored.
Defensive tactics combined with aggressive play by Simeone have proven to be effective. Salah and Mane die of fleas due to difficulty penetrating the Atletico defense.
Salah has been turned off by the Brazilian left back, Renan Lodi who deserves to be called the best player of this match. The same thing happened to Mane, who was kept by Sime Vrsaljko until the Senegalese player was replaced by Divock Origi at the beginning of the second half.
Mane’s statistics are pretty bad because he didn’t even open fire. Origi who came in to replace Mane also carved a similar bad note.
Salah is a little better than Mane and Origi with two attempts to score goals. But of the two opportunities, none of which is right leads to Jan Oblak’s goal.
While Firmino is also assigned to score goals often down to the midfield to look for the ball. As a result there is no threat that can also be made Firmino in this fight.
The former Hoffenheim player had indeed broken into Atletico’s goal because Oblak blunders in the first round. However, Firmino’s goal was disallowed by the referee because he was in an offside position when he received Salah pass.
The inability of the forward to score made Liverpool use a backup plan. Long-distance kicks were tried by players from the second line such as Jordan Henderson to Fabinho but it also did not produce results.
In fact, Atletico who only occasionally attacked could have won with a score of more than 1-0. Unfortunately the golden opportunity obtained by Alvaro Morata could not be executed perfectly.
Morata is not perfect to welcome feedback from the left side of the attacking team that makes the host opportunity fairly useless.
After that, Atletico’s orientation increasingly tended to defense. Simeone is quite satisfied with the score 1-0 because the most important goal is not conceding his team’s capital to look at the second leg match which will take place in the next three weeks.
This defeat was proof of the victory of Simeone’s tactics which relied on pragmatic play. In contrast to Liverpool, this defeat makes Klopp have to think harder to overcome the aggressive and defensive play that was demonstrated by Atletico.
This is because Atletico’s playing style in the second leg of the 16 is believed to be not going to change much. Capital 1-0 victory will make Los Rojiblancos appear to survive since the first minute at Anfield to ensure the defending champion was eliminated faster.
