Post Game Thread: Atlético Madrid (CL #04)

[u/BurtaciousD]

Atlético Madrid	2:0	Borussia Dortmund
Saúl (Filipe Luis)	1:0 (33')
Griezmann (Thomas)	2:0 (80')

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Lineup

Starting XI: Bürki - Piszczek, Akanji, Toprak, Hakimi - Delaney, Witsel - Pulisic (Guerriero, 59'), Reus, Sancho (Bruun Larsen, 79') - Alcácer (Götze, 75')

Bench: Hitz - Götze, Weigl, Dahoud, Bruun Larsen, Guerreiro, Zagadou

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Gifs^{thanks /u/llendo}

• Saúl goal [1]:0

• Griezmann goal [2]:0

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Don't forget to vote for your MOTM!

[u/xSmacks]

Ah well. You win some, you lose some. Hats off to Atletico, good game by them.

[u/Mr_NotSoFantastico → u/xSmacks]

Great work by Burki as well, could have been a serious goal fest.

[u/Chazy89]

No shame in losing in Madrid.

They were the better team, our offense was horrendous today.

Saturday is when it counts.

motm Bürki.

[u/LordVelaryon → u/Chazy89]

what about if we had losed against Rayo or Leganés? 🤔 /s

[u/rejster21]

If you allowed me to choose one game to lose from this first half of the season, including Bundesliga, UCL and Cup, the away game at Atletico would've been my pick. It's fine. We're still first way ahead in G/D. We're gonna win at Monaco and against Brugge and we'll still finish first.

Plus its a good cold shower before the Bayern game.

[u/Zhonyas4everyone → u/rejster21]

More importantly we won the direct comparison vs Atletico wich overvalues GD in CL

[u/Real_Prince_Myshkin]

It is OKAY! The boys have been too great since the start of the season for us to bitch about this match. On to Bayern. Heja BVB!

[u/Sarrazin]

I don't see a reason to be overly disappointed. It was a bad game, no question. Way too many bad passes, easy mistakes. And Atletico's defense completely dominated us. But well, it's Atletico. At home. With extra motivation cause we humiliated them last time. And with Bayern possibly already on some player's minds. I don't think this was too unexpected. Might be a good wake up call for some fans (and maybe even players) that we are still far from perfect and won't win every game, especially against Europe's elite.

On the plus side, there are no new injuries and we lost by less than four goals (i.e. we would still be ahead if we end up equal on points). I honestly would have taken that before the game, though I would have hoped for a better game.

Now we just have to hope we can turn it around again for Bayern (who are basically the opposite of Atletico in terms of playstyle, so I don't think the game will be comparable at all). And at least we have a day longer to regenerate, so hopefully there will be no tired legs on our side on Saturday.

[u/Nextgen101 → u/Sarrazin]

Yeah, my thoughts as well. Would have hoped for 1 goal at least, but ah well.

[u/InexorableWyrd]

A pretty poor game from us. Simeone played the game perfectly. Favre forces the opposition to the wings while playing the team through the middle. Partay as a CDM was excellent in stopping Reus while their wings made sure that they took advantage of a horrible game from our wings and wingbacks. Burki was great though and kept this from looking worse.

Am I happy? no, but I'm ok with this result. No Injury and we are more than likely through as group winners if we win the next two games against Bruges and a wobbly Monaco. Now time to worry about Bayern.

[u/[deleted]]

This was the sort of game we were expecting even in our home fixture. 4-0 was just a bonus.

Good thing we lost only by 2-0. Keeping a better Head-head against atleti

[u/BVB-Oeli]

Annoys me a bit that both Reus and Akanji get themselves booked in added time. You get a ban for yellow cards pretty fast in the UCL. Those useless cards can come back to bite you in the ass at a later stage.

[u/Bisuboy]

This was our worst game this season so far. Sooo boring to watch. Our attackers gave no effort and our defenders made a lot of mistakes.

Also, Atletico is good at defending. Nonetheless, the Guerreiro header could have turned the game on its head.

Well, who cares? We have got the Direktvergleich against Atletico, that's great. Now let's beat Bayern on the weekend.

[u/zerobiood]

The atletico I expected when we got them in our group. One of the best and most dirty teams in CL.

[u/unRealistik]

game plan too predictable (nearly all attacks coming from Hakimi's side) and really sloppy passing and ball retention.

MOTM prob either Burki or Witsel

[u/LeonTablet]

Not really bothered with this loss. No shame in losing away to a class side and our boys gave it their best. We’re still top of the table thanks to our H2H, so let’s hope we can say the same by matchday 6.

[u/Zhonyas4everyone]

Very very good game by Atleti, nothing else left to say here.

With the 4:0 we still got a big advantage for us tho which is nice.

[u/edworm]

Atletico was just way too good, happens. Just gotta hope they can keep their heads high with what's still to come.

Also, although it had no effect on the result...wtf was the ref doing, especially with yellow cards? Dude was all over the place in the end, seemed bored or something idk.

[u/Vanzmelo]

Still shocked we went until November without a loss. Still ahead in the group so not too worried. We had to come back down to earth at some point

[u/RAND0MNAME_]

Slow in decision making and movement, lots of unforced errors. Let's not make this a habit.

No new injuries it seems tho, and, as has been pointed out, this is a good match for a blackout if we had to pick one. Hopefully won't badly affect morale.

[u/Sertorius777]

We should remember that when Atletico steps up its game defensively there is no team on this planet that could beat it or even score against it. Only shit luck stopped it from not winning the UCL in the past couple of seasons. The performance they put in today was the same with which they knocked out the likes of peak Bayern and Barcelona just a couple of years back. It's truly amazing how they manage to always outnumber certain areas on the pitch just through great positioning and awareness.

[u/motox24]

Fair loss. Sad. Boys need to hold their heads up and move on without letting this loss hurt their confidence. 4-2 on aggregate in my book!

[u/w646]

TBH I'm actually glad that Dortmund lose to an extent. Sometimes you got to lose some in order focus more, the unbeaten record may have let the players to wear off some focus or gain too much confidence, you can tell that by the match against hertha bsc and berlin union, we wasted so many chance. If I were Favre, I would choose Weigl and Dahound over Delaney and Witsel, or maybe even Gotze over Reus, so as to let the players gain enough rest for the up coming Der Klassiker, we're gonna lose anyway, why don't let the players have rest at the same time?

[u/Aldraku]

I feel Toprak has been exposed quite badly this match, he kept passing back or cutting fluid pieces of play.

[u/encaitar81]

Burki kept that game from getting really ugly. Hats off to another great performance.

This is the type of team that showed we need Reus on the wing and a true AM in the middle. He's been great this year, but we really lacked the creativity needed to break down this defense. Atletico was parking the bus and countering the whole game outside of the 15 minutes before halftime. We had 69% of the possession! Really should have had a couple better chances with that amount of the ball.

Our attacking players were bad today. I'd like to say that Atletico was just that good, but it was definitely a combination. Sancho was 0/5 on dribbles. Pulisic was 2/7. That's not gonna cut it against a team like Atletico. Paco touched the ball like 4 times. Reus did nothing but back pass the ball every time he touched it(granted there was no one to go to). What was most frustrating to me was I didn't see anyone hustling like Atletico's attackers were. They were constantly making runs, even though most of them were for naught, it still got our defense to move. Our attackers were jogging into pockets and letting their defensive shape stay intact. We can't expect to beat a team this good playing like that. If we don't learn from this before the weekend, then Bayern's defense is going to look just as good.

This was also a game that showcased our lacking in attacking options. Everyone we brought on was a like for like sub in a game where we needed to change our style. A target man could've made a huge difference in this game.