Atleti 3-2 Athletic: Primera Division Match Report

Atleti 3-2 Athletic is a comeback with the numbers to prove it. Atleti were 0-1 down at half-time and won the second period 3-1, which means every goal that decided the match arrived after the interval and the home side scored three of them in 45 minutes. For a team that had lost their previous four league matches, that is a specific kind of recovery.

The run coming in was genuinely bad: 2-3 at Real Madrid, 1-2 at home to Barça, 1-2 at Sevilla, 2-3 at Elche. Four defeats, ten goals conceded, and a fourth-placed side scoring in all of them without ever holding on. Athletic arrived ninth on 41 points from 32 with a goal difference of -11, having beaten Osasuna 1-0 in their previous outing and won at this ground in December, 1-0 in the reverse fixture.

Atleti were fourth on 57 with +18, five points ahead of Betis in fifth and five behind Villarreal in third. Nothing in their position was in immediate danger, but a fifth straight defeat would have made it a live question with six rounds left. Going in behind at half-time, at home, against a mid-table side, was the worst possible start to answering it.

Atleti finished on 60 points and a goal difference of +19, stopping the slide and restoring the cushion below them to a size that made fourth place a matter of not collapsing rather than of catching anyone. Winning from behind, having failed to do exactly that four times running, is worth more to a team's month than the three points on their own.

Athletic stayed on 41 with the difference slipping to -12. They had led at the interval away at a Champions League contender and lost by a goal, which reads better than most of what a ninth-placed side collects in April but changed nothing about a season that had settled into mid-table. Sixteen points had divided them at kick-off and nineteen did afterwards.

Our pre-match call was Atleti Win at 1.85. It came in, and the price was generous precisely because the recent evidence pointed the other way — four straight defeats and a home record that had stopped protecting them. We took the view that a top-four side with something still to lose would eventually stop conceding cheaply, and that Athletic's away record gave Atleti enough room to find the goals. Half-time made that look wrong. What rescued it was the one thing the losing run had never removed: Atleti kept scoring, and here they scored three. Verdict: won