Atletico Madrid have started cranking up the mind games ahead of next week’s second leg with midfielder Koke aiming an icy blast at Pep Guardiola. The Manchester City manager touched a nerve when he described Atletico’s ultra-defensive tactics as being difficult to deal with.
City found it tough to break down the Spanish champions, until Phil Foden went on as a substitute and delivered the killer pass for Kevin De Bruyne to establish a slender lead ahead of the second leg at the Wanda Metropolitano next Wednesday. The Blues dominated possession but a combination of well-organised defending and a little skulduggery kept them at bay for most of the game.
Guardiola said afterwards of his opposite number Diego Simeone: “He has put (Antoine) Griezmann on the far right and Joao Felix on the far left, and they have gone 5-5-0. Two lines of five. And in prehistory, today and in a hundred thousand years, attacking a 5-5 is very difficult. It is that there is no space. Apart from the fact that they are very competitive and defend very well, there is no space.”
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It is unlikely that Guardiola was insulting Atletico’s style of play with his reference to “prehistory” - he was at pains before the game to rubbish the notion that there is anything wrong with adopting a defensive stance, and made the point that City have been known to “win ugly” as well. And he simply seemed to be stressing the point that it has always been difficult to play against two banks of five.
But his words were seized upon by Koke, who responded on his Instagram account by saying: “In love with your story since prehistory. Proud to be from Atleti”.
City will have to cope with the atmosphere at the Metropolitano, as well as the antics of the Atletico players, who descended into time-wasting, wind-ups and play-acting, and Koke’s post is the opening shot. Simeone, in his post-match press conference, was complimentary about City, saying: “It is a bad result because we lost 1-0 and we were looking to win. It is clear we were playing against an extraordinary opponent.
"Numbers speak for themselves, stats speak for themselves, the amount of goals they score at home, they play in a very dynamic way, they push players forward, always looking to play collectively in a lovely way and we play just with that feeling that we want to go through, looking to face a team that have the weapons they have.
“In the first half we defended extremely well. They managed to score because they attacked in a very lovely way. In the second half we could have attacked a bit better in a few situations on the counter-attack. We had to suffer. We have to go to Madrid now and do the same and use the tools we have at our disposal.”
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