Atletico Madrid Angered by Barcelona Mastery

Barcelona defeated Atletico Madrid 3-2 in the second leg of their Copa del Rey quarterfinal clash at the Vicente Calderon in Madrid on Wednesday. Neymar hit a brace while Miranda awarded Barca to answer Fernando Torres‘ opener and Raul Garcia‘s penalty.

Atletico Madrid scored early but were caught out twice on the counter… both in the second half. They missed a chance in the final third and while they reacted slowly, Barca was already down at the other end, and gave the ball to Neymar to finish. Atletico’s 4-4-2 was no match for Barcelona’s 4-3-3 as it left them exposed way too many times.

Gabi Fernandez (Atleti captain) was ejected at halftime for an altercation in the tunnel, Arda Turan was only cautioned for throwing a show past the linesman and Mario Suarez was ejected for receiving two yellows in the second half. Barcelona were not able to score more in the second half… or they felt a bit sorry for the hosts.

After this loss, Diego Simeone must regather his troops to focus on La Liga and the Champions League. The 4-4-2 is not the answer as we witnessed today. Instead, he needs to field them in either a 4-2-3-1 or even a 4-3-3 to be able to create more chances and to have enough guys with the ability to run back to help out defensively.

Torres did score once, but it arrived on one of the luckier counters we will ever see against Barcelona. Mario Mandzukic cannot run as fast, and is not as good dribbling the ball, but he can score perfectly with his feet or his head… in addition to being bigger and stronger than the Spaniard.

This is a game that is full of lessons for Atleti… with the two main ones being to remember to run back quickly and efficiently while also keeping their calm no matter what. Barcelona managed to come into their stadium and outplay, anger and embarrass them. This is something that should never happen again.