Atletico Madrid are through to the knockout stages with a game to spare in their Champions League group, after they cruised to a 3-1 win over Feyenoord in the Netherlands. As manager Diego Simeone pointed out, this is not a luxury they have enjoyed in recent years.
Los Rojiblancos beat Feyenoord courtesy of two own goals and a Mario Hermoso strike that looked initially like a cross. They could have been more goals to the good through Alvaro Morata, but as happened in their clash against Real Mallorca, he was not effective
“Let’s not start saying bad things after two games without scoring and create an atmosphere. He is fine, calm and with the confidence of the team and the coaching staff. The goal will come, I told him so at half-time. Don’t worry, the plays are there and naturally he will score again.”
Simeone was impressed with his own side’s movement of the ball against the Dutch giants, but did slip in a note of praise for Celtic, who were eliminated from Europe after a 2-0 defeat to Lazio.
“The opponent that pressed us best were Celtic at their ground. Feyenoord is a team that tries to press, although they immediately retreated because they saw that they could not gain a foothold due to the good circulation that the team has. There was Witsel, Gimenez, Mario… also Rodrigo and Koke to generate a block of play. The team needed this and we try to support them.”
El Cholo would not be drawn on whether he thought they could mix it with the biggest sides, instead telling Diario AS how good Samuel Lino and Rodrigo Riquelme were.
“We are here to compete with whoever we have to compete with. From a humble position, and wanting to improve, we know our defects and from there we try to enhance our virtues. There were very good individual performances, Riquelme especially. Some of you may have thought why I put Riquelme and not Lino. I believed that Riquelme could give us that defensive work that was brilliant and offensively very powerful.”
Simeone’s side are in fine fettle this season, and with the exception of two defeats to Las Palmas and Valencia in La Liga, have had the better in the vast majority of games. They take on Barcelona this Sunday in a crunch clash, as Simeone looks for his first ever league victory over the Blaugrana in Catalonia.
