Barcelona 0-2 Atlético Madrid: Champions League Match Report

Barça 0-2 Atleti in the first leg of the quarter-final, and the visitors did the two things a side needs from a European away tie in a single evening: they scored twice and they conceded nothing.

The scoring was evenly spread. Atlético led 1-0 at the interval and added a second after it, which is the least dramatic way to build a two-goal lead and, for the side holding it, much the most useful. There was no period in which Barcelona were level and none in which the tie briefly looked like theirs. A goalless second half would have left the home side a manageable deficit; instead the margin doubled in the half they needed to close it.

An away win by two with a clean sheet is close to the maximum available from a first leg. It leaves the return under the visitors' control and turns the second leg into a chase for the side that expected to be dictating one.

It set up the return rather than settling the tie, but it set it up heavily. Barcelona needed to win in Madrid by three, or by two and then survive extra time, against a Simeone side defending a lead at home — the specific scenario Atlético have built two decades of European reputation on.

What followed made the point. Barcelona did win the second leg, 2-1 at the Metropolitano on 14 April, and went out anyway: Atlético advanced 3-2 on aggregate and met Arsenal in the semi-finals, where they were eliminated. The Camp Nou result, not the Metropolitano one, was the ninety minutes that decided which of these two clubs stayed in the competition.

Our pre-match call was Barça Win at 1.56, rated high confidence. It was wrong on the night and, as the tie turned out, wrong about the tie. The rating is the part that deserves the criticism: 1.56 on a home first leg against Atlético in a knockout round priced in a domestic-form gap and priced out the one thing Simeone's sides are most reliably good at, which is travelling to a stronger opponent and taking the game away from them. Losing at home by two in the first leg is the outcome a high-confidence backer of the favourite has no answer to. Verdict: lost