Bayern Munich Defeat Won't Bother Diego Simeone but Gives Him Food for Thought
Atletico Madrid are no strangers to failing to live up to the standards set by Barcelona and Real Madrid, but some heights are higher than others.
After all, the fact that Atletico missed the chance on Tuesday to join Barca, Real, AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain and Spartak Moscow as just the sixth club to win all six of their Champions League group matches in a season was regrettable but hardly anything to get too upset about.
The 1-0 defeat at Bayern Munich had already been declared pretty much null and void before the Atletico players touched down in Bavaria on Monday.
Their excellent results throughout what had looked to be a tricky group at the outset meant whatever happened in Munich was going to be irrelevant. Given Bayern had won their previous 14 Champions League home matches, the fact that soon became 15 really shouldn't be seen too much of a surprise.
Fielding a team that was a mixture of his usual selections and a nod to the experimental, Atletico manager Diego Simeone watched on as Robert Lewandowski's first-half free-kick sealed the points for a Bayern side in an unfamiliar position this season—second place.
Carlo Ancelotti's team ended up as runners-up to Atletico in Group D and are second in the Bundesliga behind shock early-season leaders RB Leipzig. The last time Atleti were here, they made Bayern look second best again as they edged past them in the Champions League semi-finals.
That is not a position that Bayern take lightly, and so there was no surprise that they were determined to get one over on Simeone's side so soon after their disappointment of last season. If this result meant more to anyone, it was to them.
But that's not to say there wasn't anything for Atletico to gain from it.
Speaking at his post-match press conference—words reported here by Atletico's official website—a philosophical Simeone said: "The work done was very good. The first half was different from the second one. Both the beginning and the end of the match show us that the team is there."
He added:
"We had two good intents from [Yannick] Carrasco at the beginning. Later, Bayern was better. They had a good possession and scored the goal from a direct free kick. The second half was more matched and I think that in the end we saw an intense and aggressive team. We leave with a good impression from those 15 final minutes.
"
A good 15 minutes, then, but a decent performance overall.
As expected, two of Simeone's changes included bringing in new full-backs, with Lucas Hernandez and Sime Vrsaljko replacing his usual defenders, Filipe Luis and Juanfran—and both doing so impressively.
The 20-year-old Hernandez, in particular, turned in a strong performance to go alongside his displays when he came into the team following injuries at the tail end of the last campaign.
Indeed, this is a player who has Champions League final experience having appeared as a late substitute in last season's penalty shootout defeat to Real Madrid in Milan. His display at the Allianz Arena was another of impressive stature as he faced the challenge of Bayern's Arjen Robben.
The Dutchman—who'll be 33 next month and has suffered with injuries in recent years—might not be the player he once was, but he's certainly a tricky customer; Hernandez can take great confidence from the manner in which he handled him on an awkward evening in Bavaria.
On the other flank, Vrsaljko—sitting in for Juanfran—was again impressive in what was just his sixth appearance for the club after signing from Italian side Sassuolo in the summer.
The 24-year-old has more top-flight experience than Hernandez, but he hasn't quite been exposed to many occasions of this magnitude. Indeed, while this may have been seen as a meaningless game for some in the Atletico squad, it was quite possibly the biggest occasion of the Croatian's career so far; and he handled it well.
Bayern's Douglas Costa can be a tricky customer at the best of times, and given that he was backed up by Portuguese wonderkid Renato Sanches—a key player in his country's Euro 2016 win in the summer—Vrsaljko would have had every reason to be worried. But he didn't look it.
Further forward, Simeone sought to improve Carrasco's recent patchy form by stationing him in attack alongside Antoine Griezmann, leaving Fernando Torres on the bench and only introducing Kevin Gameiro for the Belgium international on the hour mark.
By that stage, Carrasco had begun to fade from the game, with his two early chances as mentioned above by Simeone perhaps affecting him in a negative manner.
Carrasco had such a wonderful, goal-filled start to the season that there was bound to be a downturn in form eventually, but it can be easy to forget that he is just 22 years old.
Where the fielding of the two fringe full-backs—and of substitute Thomas Partey, who got a well-deserved 22 minutes in place of Koke in the second half—was more about just giving any sort of appearance to some squad players, there seems to be something else involved with Carrasco.
He would surely benefit from a run in a designated position, one in which he knows just what is going on both ahead and beside of him.
Simeone can be forgiven for doing pretty much whatever he wanted in a game such as this one, but going forward, it would be nice to see him working Carrasco into a tighter, more disciplined structure that will allow his team to get back to the consistency they had come to be renowned for.
A failure to do that could see him left out of the team in the coming weeks, perhaps starting with a huge game on Monday night at Villarreal.
As for the Bayern game, there really were few complaints at the defeat, which was settled by Lewandowski's fine free-kick—a strike that was even better than Xabi Alonso's against Atletico in the semi-finals of this competition last season.
Whether Atletico will reach such heights again will be revealed in the new year, but the failure to secure a 100 per cent group-stage record won't have any sort of bearing on that.
This result will be forgotten about, even if some of the performances should give Simeone food for thought.
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