Atlético Madrid v Arsenal: Champions League semi-final, first leg – live | Champions League
Key occasions
Atletico are famend as a good, pragmatic facethowever their identification has modified somewhat in the previous couple of years. Their 14 Champions League video games this season have produced a whopping 60 targets.
Arsenal’s video games have been lots tighter, notably at their finish. In 12 video games they’ve scored 27 and conceded solely 5.
The gamers on a yellow card
Nobody. Yellow playing cards are wiped going into the semi-finals.
Sid Lowe
At the start of the ultimate coaching session earlier than their largest sport in a decadeAtlético Madrid’s gamers lined up by the middle circle on the Metropolitano and waited for his or her coach to come back. Diego Simeone arrived and ran by means of the center of them, from Juan Musso and Jan Oblak at one finish to Antoine Griezmann and Ademola Lookman on the different. As he handed, head down, they cheered and hit him – if not take away as exhausting as they do when it is a participant’s flip. Gauntlet run, applause echoed around the empty stadium. Happy birthday, mister.
Simeone turned 56 on Tuesday. He has spent nearly 20 of these right here: first because the captain who gained the double, then the coach who lifted Atlético’s next league title, 18 years onand now leads them into their fourth and their seventh European Cup semi-final, 9 years for the reason that final. What do you get the person who has all of it? “Wow! You can’t imagine how good it is to be in the four best teams in Europe,” he stated after the quarter-final; “I have no birthday wish,” he stated earlier than this semi-final, “just pure gratitude to be able to be with my three sons on my birthday, with my two daughters, my mum, my wife, my lifelong friends.”
One of the sons was hidden within the crowd someplace, hitting him. The day that Simeone bade farewell to the Vicente Calderón as a participant in December 2004, he carried his youngest son, two-year-old Giuliano, in his arms. The days earlier than he got here again to Madrid as coach in December 2011, he stopped in a restaurant in Mar del Plata and, over a croissant and a glass of milk, requested Giuliano, then eight, what he thought. “You’re going to coach [Radamel] Falcao?!” the child replied, pleasure giving strategy to actuality. “But…if it goes well, you won’t come back.”
David Hytner
It was the night time when Arsenal made their first massive assertion of the season within the Champions Leagueonce they marketed their need to go all the way in which in Europe’s most glamorous competitors; to create membership historical past. They had welcomed Atlético Madrid within the third spherical of league part matches and it changed into a showcase for all the greatest bits about Mikel Arteta’s staff.
The bolted-door protection. The livid counterpress. The physicality. The pace and ruthlessness. The set-piece productiveness. And, linked to all the things however trumping the lot, the whole self-belief. Arsenal they had been unable to discover a method by means of within the first half or the early a part of the second – it was tight – however they didn’t panic as a result of they knew the objective would come. It was inevitable. They had been inevitable.
When Gabriel Magalhães scored it within the 57th minute, it was the immediate for a devastating salvo, Arsenal raining in three extra by the seventieth minute. the sport finished 4-0Atlético departing battered and bruised. It was late October and the efficiency and end result had been very a lot of a bit with the Arsenal of the first half of the season.
Team information
Mikel Arteta makes two modifications, each in assault, from the nervy Premier League victory over Newcastle on Saturday. Gabriel Martinelli and Viktor Gyokereswho scored three of the 4 targets when Arsenal defeated Atletico earlier this season, changed Eberechi Eze and the injured Kai Havertz. It’s the MGM assault – Madueke, Gyokeres, Martinelli – so we’re contractually obliged to link to a lion roaring.
Bukayo Saka is not but to suit to play a full 90 minutes; Riccardo Calafiori joins him on a robust Arsenal bench.
Atletico make 4 modifications from their 3-2 win over Athletic Bilbao on the weekend. Julian Alvarez, David Hanko, Johnny Cardoso and Ademola Lookman are available in for Clement Lenglet, Pablo Barrios, Alex Baena and Alexander Sorloth.
Atletico Madrid (4-4-2) Oblak; Llorente, Pubill, Hancko, Ruggeri; Simeone, Cardoso, Koke, Lookman; Griezmann, Alvarez.
Subs: Musso, Esquivel, Sorloth, Mendoza, Baena, Almada, Lenglet, Molina, Vargas, Le Normand, Bonar, Julio Diaz.
Arsenal (4-3-3) Stripe; White, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie; Odegaard, Zubimendi, Rice; Madueke, Gyokeres, Martinelli.
Subs: Arrizabalaga, Setford, Mosquera, Saka, Jesus, Eze, Norgaard, Trossard, Calafiori, Lewis-Skelly, Dowman, Salmon.
Referee Danny Makkelie (Netherlands)
This is the fourth assembly between Atletico and Arsenal. The first two got here within the Europa League semi-final of 2017-18, when targets from Antoine Griezmann and Diego Costa put Atleti by means of 2-1 on combination. The different was within the league part of this season’s competitors, when Arsenal ran riot within the second half.
Preamble
History is made! Or slightly, will probably be at 8pm BST tonight, when Mikel Arteta’s oft-maligned Arsenal play back-to-back Champions League semi-finals for the first time within the membership’s historical past. It’ll depend for little if they do not win both the Premier League or Champions League this season, nevertheless it’s an plain marker of their development from the 15th-best team in England to at least one Europe’s best.
For the second 12 months in a row, Arsenal’s semi-final entails arguably the 2 greatest groups ever to win the European Cup or Champions League. Paris Saint-Germain’s wonderful triumph final season left a emptiness for Atletico, though they’d argue they had been already within the prime two. After all, no facet has performed in additional Champions League finals with out profitable the factor. On all three events, in 1974, 2014 and 2016, Atleti got here agonizingly shut.
Either they or Arsenal, who misplaced their solely closing to Barcelona 20 years in the past, will get one other crack in Budapest on 30 May. It needs to be a captivating battle between two groups greatest identified for his or her defensive excellence. We’ll have none of that nine-goal nonsense tonight.
kick off 8pm BST.
