Right, that’s all from me. It’s been intriguing. Barcelona’s attacking trio had an awkward evening. Neymar should have scored with his head, and came close with a couple of right-footers; Suárez should have been sent off, and then scored with a tap-in and a super power header; Messi was fairly peripheral, dropping deep to find space, or running into the box and being crowded out. Atlético defended resolutely, but once down to 10 men dropped deeper and deeper, and grew narrower and narrower. A goal became inevitable, two eventually followed, but they need a 1-0 win at home to go through, which is at least plausible.
Anyway, here, by way of parting gift, is a match report. Bye!
“Possibly a ‘winning’ score for Atleti given that they were down to 10 men,” writes Mushtaq Rahman. “Barça will have to attack, otherwise they could be hit with a sucker punch one-nil. Torres has gone from El Niño to El Ninny!” Excellent retro insulting there.
Did they live in the house at the same time, though?
Champions League quarter final first leg at Camp Nou, the three goals scored by men who lived in the same house.
— Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) April 5, 2016
Logic suggests this is a closely-balanced tie. Happily, statistics also suggest this is a closely-balanced tie. So that’s good.
Under current regulations, 584 ties started with 2-1 on first leg. 49% came back (49%).
— MisterChip (English) (@MisterChiping) April 5, 2016
It is, as Gloria Greppi points out, a story of one former Liverpool striker who scored once and was then rightly sent off, and another former Liverpool striker who should have been sent off and then scored twice.
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It finishes 19-16 on fouls committed, which is a little fewer than I’d have expected.
Final score: Barcelona 2-1 Atlético Madrid
The whistle blows for the n-millionth and final time, and this game is done! Barcelona have a slender lead to take into leg two, but despite playing against 10 men for most of the game, that was tough.
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90+3 mins: A bit of slightly haphazard but fully committed attacking by Barcelona ends with Neymar being crowded out.
90+1 mins: We’re into the first of five added minutes.
90 mins: A final substitution, Angel Correa replacing Saúl Níguez.
89 mins: Someone needs to confiscate the referee’s whistle. He simply hasn’t stopped blowing it for 20 minutes. Its latest outing came when Saúl hauled down Sergi Roberto. Weirdly, Atlético get the free kick.
88 mins: Mascherano chips the ball into the area, and Rafinha leaps with Lucas. The Atlético defender wins the ball and then goes down, clutching his face and rolling around. Replays confirm that there’s absolutely no reason for it.
87 mins: Moments later, there’s a foul throw from Dani Alves. In a Champions League quarter-final, for shame.
86 mins: August Fernández fouls Dani Alves, and he too is booked. This second half has been an absolute celebration of the colour yellow from Felix Brych.
85 mins: Messi twinkletoes his way into the penalty area in delightful style, but once there he has no space for a shot so falls over instead. No penalty.
82 mins: Another booking, Mascherano fouling Saúl Níguez on the touchline for no obvious reason. And Barcelona make their final change, Arda Turan coming on, against his former club, for Iniesta.
81 mins: So far this season Atlético have played Barcelona twice, scored first twice and lost 2-1 twice.
80 mins: Sergi Roberto comes on for Barcelona, with Busquets hooked.
80 mins: Oblak is booked for time wasting, as he dribbles the ball from one side of the six-yard box to the other before taking a goal kick.
78 mins: Neymar is taken out, five yards inside Atlético’s half but with nobody between him and goal, by Lucas. The referee is a bit lenient in showing only a yellow card.
Vintage Suarez, this - almost kicks a defender into the stands in first half; slaps someone in second half; scores two goals, settles game.
— Tom Williams (@tomwfootball) April 5, 2016
@Simon_Burnton haven't watched much Barca recently so I guess it's good to see Suarez hasn't changed at all. Good footballer, bad human.
— Paul Waggott (@paultwaggott) April 5, 2016
76 mins: Atlético take off Griezmann and get the (Thomas) Partey started.
GOAL! Barcelona 2-1 Atlético Madrid (Luis Suárez, 74 mins)
A second goal for Suárez! Messi passes to the Uruguayan, who lays off first time to Dani Alves on the right before spinning and heading into the area. Alves chips in a cross, and Suárez bangs his header past Oblak from 12 yards or so!
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73 mins: Atleti swing the ball into the box, nothing much comes of it, and as Barcelona try to break Griezmann brings down Piqué, and he too is booked.
72 mins: Neymar is challenged by Juanfran right in front of the dug-outs, and both managers immediately leap to their feet, waving their arms around. The referee waves play on, and moments later Neymar commits a foul and the whistle blows.
70 mins: Luis Suárez has been booked for pushing over Filipe Luis with a flat left palm on the neck, right in front of the behind-the-goal referee.
68 mins: And Barcelona continue to push, Messi wasting a 40-yard free-kick with a chipped ball into the area that floats into Oblak’s palms.
64 mins: And the home side immediately bring Rafinha on for Rakitic.
GOAL! Barcelona 1-1 Atlético Madrid (Luis Suárez, 63 mins)
They have a goal! It’s a little scrappy, but when there are 18 people in a penalty area they do tend to be. The ball is worked to Dani Alves on the right, who crosses over the six-yard box to Jordi Alba. His volley is heading off target, wide of the far post, but Suárez is standing in its path and turns it in!
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62 mins: And seconds later, Neymar has another right-footed shot, this one flying a foot wide of the far post.
61 mins: A booking for Filipe Luis, for grabbing a handful of Suárez shirt on the right touchline.
58 mins: Piqué makes a run to the far post from open play – Atleti are very unlikely to do any sudden attacking, after all – and though the cross finds him it reaches him quite high, and he tries and fails to control with a foot rather than heading.
56 mins: Oblak saves! Messi shoots from 20 yards, low and hard and arrowing inside the post, but Oblak pushes it away, and Juanfran completes the clearance.
55 mins: Another chance for Neymar! This time it’s a lofted Rakitic cross, and Neymar meets it, again unmarked, quite a way out and needing to put all the pace on the ball. He gets a bit of pace on it, but only sends it straight down the middle of goal.
54 mins: Barcelona are huffing and puffing now, trying to break through the Atlético backline and for the first time apparently believing that they can. So far, the visitors are holding firm.
53 mins: A substitution! Yannick Carrasco comes off, and Augusto Fernández replaces him.
51 mins: Neymar hits the bar! He picks up the ball on the left side of the penalty area, cuts onto his right foot and curls the ball towards the far corner, but it thunders against the meat of the woodwork! It bounces to Dani Alves, who crosses back towards Neymar, who is too busy hurling himself to the ground in search of a penalty to win the ball.
49 mins: Down one end, Atleti send a low cross zipping across goal, Griezmann deflects it a little before it reaches the near post, and it flies unmolested out the other side. Down the other, Neymar crosses, Messi controls with his chest and overheadkicks wide.
49 mins: Busquets becomes the first Barça booking, for using his elbows for leverage as he leapt for a header, and catching Saúl.
48 mins: Barcelona spring down the other end, where Suárez is played in, but is offside.
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47 mins: The visitors attack, Saúl Niguez crosses, Filipe Luis heads, and just as things started to get really interesting the header, very possibly goalbound, hits a defender.
Peeeeeeeep!
46 mins: The game is back on, Barcelona getting things started as the nine remaining Atlético outfield players instantly head back towards their own goal.
The players are back out, ready to play.
BT Sport have just shown a clip of Luis Suárez giving Juanfran an off-the-ball booting. A clear red card, had any of the 32 referees seen anything.
Was @LuisSuarez9 lucky not to see red for @FCBarcelona? #FCBAtleti #UCL https://t.co/JZtNWufD1y
— BT Sport Football (@btsportfootball) April 5, 2016
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Some first-half statistics for you:
Consult all the facts and figures from the 1st half of #FCBAtleti https://t.co/mhlnOtvOnq pic.twitter.com/ddK6SqaFqL
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) April 5, 2016
“Just to be clear, a ref can play advantage after a bad foul, wait for the next break in play, and caution a player with a yellow card. (34th min),” writes Mike Wilner. “Not sure if the situation called for it here, but did Torres merit three yellows in the first half tonight? He’s always been a sort of idiot-genius.”
I’d say the foul on Mascherano did not merit a booking, but wasn’t far off it and was in the circumstances pretty way-out foolish. That he didn’t have a little word with himself after that, and indeed flew pretty much straight into another ludicrous challenge, is certainly suggestive of significant idiocy.
Half time: Barcelona 0-1 10-man Atlético Madrid
The half ends. Barcelona are losing, and have created little (though Neymar really should have scored that header), but have that one-man advantage.
45+2 mins: Neymar blasts over the bar from 18 yards. Atlético in full-blown defensive mode must be ludicrously frustrating to play against, and that kind of shot is more a symptom than a potential cure.
45+1 mins: Into first-half stoppage time we roll, and there will be about two minutes of it.
43 mins: The main tactical implication of the red card is that the Barcelona players passing the ball around at their leisure midway through the Atletico half, as the entire away team camp in their own penalty area, are now marginally less likely to be randomly barged over.
41 mins: Jan Oblak’s first save of the evening involves patting down and then picking up a long-ranger from Javier Mascherano.
40 mins: Lucas, Filipe Luis and Neymar get into a little penalty-area high-jinks. Really, it looked like Filipe Luis leaned on Neymar, back on back, and then claimed he should have a free kick as a result. Strangely, the referee agreed, and Neymar and Lucas had a little ill-tempered chat about it.
@Simon_Burnton After his spark, touch and pace, Torres' brain also seems to have left him.
— Achuth Vasudevan (@achvasd) April 5, 2016
37 mins: Busquets was on the ball, on the halfway line. Torres closed him down, and Busquets turned away from him. Undeterred, Torres ran right into his left calf, kneed him in the buttock, and bundled him over. Textbook booking. Total idiocy.
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Fernando Torres is sent off!
35 mins: Another booking, and now Torres has gone!
34 mins: Torres barges Mascherano over with the ball long gone. That would have been one of the world’s most idiotic red cards, had the referee decided it warranted a second yellow. Which, just to be clear, he didn’t. Indeed, he waved play on, as Barcelona were still in possession.
33 mins: Another Atlético booking, Koke incurring the referee’s wrath for a backheel trip on Messi.
32 mins: Save! Griezmann shoots left footed, while off balance, from an optimistic angle, with the ball bouncing at shoulder height, and somehow gets his angle so right that it would probably have snuck in at the back stick had ter Stegen not tipped it round the post.
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29 mins: Torres trips Neymar 30 yards from goal, and is booked.
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28 mins: An optimistic Barcelona penalty appeal is turned down, as Iniesta slaloms into the penalty area before laying off to Messi, whose shot hits a nearby defender. It may have struck an arm, it was hard to tell, but from no kind of distance.
@Simon_Burnton Quit being too hard on Messi Simon, he clearly has his mind on a vacation in Panama.
— Adi Jazz (@Adijazz1706) April 5, 2016
GOAL! Barcelona 0-1 Atlético Madrid (Fernando Torres, 25 mins)
Atleti take a stroll through Barcelona’s defence, with two diagonal balls, played under little pressure, taking the ball from the halfway line to Koke, and then from Koke to Torres, running into the penalty area, who shoots low and hard down the middle of goal, and the ball zips between ter Stegen’s legs!
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24 mins: Atlético have a shot! Griezmann with it, left-footed from just outside the penalty area, but it rolls a yard wide of the near post, which Ter Stegen probably had covered.
20 mins: The move that led to that chance started with a perfect clearance from Ter Stegen to pick out Suárez, 10 yards inside the Atlético half. That’s how you do it, Messi.
19 mins: Miss! Dani Alves crosses, Neymar meets it, under no pressure, seven yards out, but heads over the bar!
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18 mins: Messi attempts a long pass from midway inside his own half, and it goes nowhere near any of his team-mates before being easily intercepted in midfield. Really, who is this joker?
17 mins: Carrasco runs from halfway towards the penalty area, is held up, shuffles sideways a bit, and then blasts a 20-yarder straight into Jordi Alba.
15 mins: Lots of applause in memory of Johann Cruyff. Interestingly, in Amsterdam they did a minute’s applause in the 14th minute – in other words, starting on 13min 0sec, but in Barcelona their minute’s applause runs through the minute that starts with 14, even though it is, in fact, the 15th. Got that?
13 mins: Another Messi shot, this one worse than the first! Neymar attacks down the left, and when he is tackled the ball breaks to Jordi Alba. His cross picks out Messi, in space, 15 yards out, and he shanks his left-foot volley, which flies halfway between the goal and the corner flag!
Photograph: Sergio Perez/Reuters
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11 mins: A nice, clean, low tackle from Pique on the edge of his area prevents Griezmann bursting into it.
10 mins: A slow-burner, this one.
8 mins: Atlético have pushed forward a couple of times in the last few minutes, though both attacks broke down before anyone reached any kind of shooting range. The second, though, should really have brought a free-kick as Dani Alves tugged at Yannick Carrasco’s shirt on the left touchline before the ball went out of play.
5 mins: Messi shoots from 20 yards, but it’s not very good – really – and trundles wide of the near post.
4 mins: Atléti are very much 4-4-2 without the ball, which they have been for most of the match thus far, with Torres and Griezmann the two advanced players.
3 mins: Actually it was a second-minute goal, from Arturo Vidal. In Barcelona, Messi lifts the ball into the penalty area trying to find Suárez, but the ball bounces out of play.
Peeeeeeeeeep!
1 min: They’re off! Atlético get us under way. Meanwhile in Munich, Bayern take a first-minute lead against Benfica.
Anthems have been sung, hands shaken and coins tossed. Deep breath now, this is actually happening.
They are now walking out of the tunnel, so that’s one step closer to football.
The teams are gathering in the tunnel, ready to run out, line up, listen to an anthem, shake hands, warm up a bit and then … play football!
Here’s a picture taken during the last domestic game between these teams, when they both wore their standard home kits and nobody seemed to get too upset about it.
Here’s Lionel Messi’s shirt, ready to wear. You may notice that it is not in Barcelona’s home colours. I can explain (or rather I can copy and paste Barcelona’s explanation):
In an effort to improve visibility and clearly differentiate the teams for both referees and spectators, Uefa requested that Barcelona and Atlético Madrid wear their second kits for both games of their upcoming Champions League quarter-final tie. Barça, thus, will be wearing their red and gold ‘Senyera’ kit, while Atlético will be sporting dark blue.
Barça’s first team has played a home Champions League match with an alternate strip once before – which was also yellow – coming in the 2008/09 Champions League preliminary stage against Wisla Krakow. It was the first official match with Pep Guardiola as manager and the 4–0 victory set Barça on their path to that season’s championship, which they won in Rome.
“Why do some team sheets go with a formation and some don’t?” wonders Ruth Purdue. Uefa’s always seem to, but no club I know does the same.
Just the 17-and-a-bit years since Barcelona lost consecutive home games, then.
Barcelona have not lost consecutive home games (when both games were played over 90 mins) since Feb 1999 - both v Valencia in lge & cup #UCL
— Sky Sports Statto (@SkySportsStatto) April 5, 2016
. . . Barcelona did lose consecutive home games in April 2003 but one of those was after extra-time v Juventus in the CL #FCBAtleti #UCL
— Sky Sports Statto (@SkySportsStatto) April 5, 2016
These people look excited. Presumably they’re waiting for a glimpse of the players. Thanks to the miracle of television I have already had that pleasure, and can confirm that some of them appear to have arrived in fancy dress.
Here’s some pre-match reading for you. About time Fifa had a good scandal.
The teams!
Here’s the official, Uefa-endorsed team sheet:
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Hello world!
Uefa describe tonight’s teams as “long-time opponents in Spanish football”, which is a little like saying the words cream and ice are “frequent companions on desert menus”, or that Holland and Belgium “habitually share the Belgium-Holland border”.
This, after all, is Atlético’s 110th visit to Barcelona, the home side having won 57.8% of the previous 109, and lost 17.4%. Barca, of course, come into the game on a one-match losing streak, their (joint) worst run since October-November 2014, when they lost two. They had, infamously, lost none of their previous 39 matches, winning 32 of them, with home-and-away 2-1 league successes over Atlético included in that run. Barcelona have thus scored, in two matches, 26.7% of all goals conceded by the ludicrously parsimonious Atletico in 31 league games this season (though Diego Simeone’s side have only had one clean sheet in four league games over the past month).
Before we get too excited, this is a meeting between two clubs from the same nation, which isn’t really the point of European football. There is already a perfectly good way of finding out which is the best team in Spain in any given season, with no help from Uefa. There is no argument here to settle, not really. This is basically a little friendly exercise to decide who should go through to the next round, when the victor will be able to resume proper competition, and I’ve no doubt that both teams will play the game with just that kind of amicable approach.
Atlético played Barcelona at this stage of this competition two years ago (and won), and played Real Madrid at this stage of this competition last year (and lost). Weirdly, for what are basically, as previously discussed, friendlies, there were 12 yellow cards shown in the former tie and 11 in the latter, two of them in the second leg to Arda Turan. The Turk has since upped sticks and joined Barcelona, which will surely add to the spirit of jolly bonhomie this evening.
Here at Guardian Towers we’re so enthusiastic about tonight that we’ve gone and made a whole video about what could be described as Spain’s new clásico. And here it is!
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