Juventus vs. Atletico Madrid: Tactical Review of Champions League Game
Juventus and Atletico Madrid played to a diplomatic 0-0 draw at Juventus Stadium on Tuesday night, with both sides gaining admission to the UEFA Champions League latter stages as a result.
The Bianconeri would have had to defeat Diego Simeone's men by two goals to leapfrog them into first place, and given the Spanish outfit came into the game on a run of four consecutive clean sheets, that was never likely to happen.
Let's take a tactical look at this one to see how it played out.
TOP NEWS
Madrid Fines Players $590K 😲
'Mbappé Out' Petition Gaining Steam 😳
Star-Studded World Cup Ad 🤩
Formations and XIs
Juventus lined up, loosely, in what you might call a 4-4-2 diamond.
In reality, it was a confusion of bodies starting central and drifting, with Fernando Llorente up front.
Atletico Madrid were in a flat 4-4-2, with Raul Garcia supporting Mario Mandzukic and Mario Suarez in central midfield ahead of Tiago.
No Space for Carlos Tevez...
Beginning with Atletico getting into Juve's box inside 20 seconds, and then ending with an Andrea Pirlo free-kick that hit the wall, a frantic opening two minutes gave way to a classic tactical stalemate pretty quickly.
Atletico sank into a very deep-set 4-4-2 and didn't bother to press the centre-backs in possession. As always, they were compact and eradicated any space between the lines, crowding out Carlos Tevez and forcing him either exceptionally deep or very wide in order to get on the ball.
His touch map shows how ineffectual he was in the danger areas. With just five inside the penalty area and seven in the general area, Atleti did a good job of squeezing him out.
Gabi and Suarez dropped in and shielded their defence in a disciplined fashion, nullifying the strength of midfield runs from deep in the narrow diamond. Paul Pogba, Roberto Pereyra and Arturo Vidal all tried to surge forward and break between the lines, but no progress was made.
Leonardo Bonucci ended up with 131 touches, per WhoScored.com. That's because it kept coming back to him after his colleagues failed to break through. Again.
...so Cross it to Llorente!
After Pirlo and company twigged that Tevez was getting nowhere—and that Pereyra was failing to impact in the space his compatriot left after dropping deep, despite his best efforts—the tactics changed.
Juve began firing balls out for Stephan Lichtsteiner to chase and cross, drawing on his main strengths by allowing the Swiss international to gallop into space and swing balls in.
With Llorente up front, why not? The big Basque has made a career out of bullying defenders and heading home.
Unfortunately, he was playing against Diego Godin, who is without a doubt the most dominant, titanic aerial defender playing at the top level in world football. Llorente won one header of note all game after Pogba picked him out with a beautiful, outside-of-the-boot delivery. It looped harmlessly into Miguel Angel Moya's arms.
With Tevez and Llorente out of ideas, Massimiliano Allegri looked bemused as to how to crack the code.
Second Half
It got no easier in the second half, but despite Atleti's threat on the counterattack waning in conjunction with Mario Mandzukic's frustration levels rising, Gabi managed to hit the post. Gianluigi Buffon had also been called into action early on to deny Koke in a one-on-one situation.
Llorente won two headers all night, both of which were on the halfway line.
Atleti continued to nullify every attacking method Juve tried, driving Pirlo to try to beat Arda Turan for pace to the byline and cross.
Madness.
With about 10 minutes to go, both teams "declared" and essentially accepted a draw. Juventus, out of ideas and perplexed as to how to break Simeone's men down, passed it around the back line until the final whistle went.
Atleti kept another clean sheet (five in a row and five consecutive in the Champions League), and Juve qualify in second.
