Barcelona 3 - 0 Atletico de Madrid: Review and Highlights (Holy crap, we’re good edition)

By: Isaiah | October 8th, 2007

I have to admit right here and now that I was not expecting this sort of scoreline. It wasn’t even particularly flattering, but I did not believe Barca would thrash Atletico so thoroughly. Certainly Atletico had their chances, both before and after Abbiati gifted Deco the ball and Barcelona its first goal, but let’s be honest for a moment: Barcelona dominated the last 70 minutes of the game.

The lineups:
Barcelona: Valdes, Oleguer, Puyol, Milito, Abidal, Xavi, Iniesta, Deco, Ronaldinho (Dos Santos 81′), Messi, Henry (Bojan 86′).

Atleti: Abbiati, Pablo, Pernia, Seitaridis, Ze Castro (Eller 45′), Maniche, Raul Garcia, Reyes (Maxi 55′), Simão, Kun Aguero (Luis Garcia 63′), Forlan.

The whistle to start the game blew and Atletico were out fast, creating some chances, opening up the Barcelona midfield a little bit. I was just thinking about how much the team was missing Toure’s presence in the center of the field as that was where Atletico was creating some space and then bam, Messi gets the ball in the attacking third, flicks the ball in harmlessly to Abbiati, who somehow fumbles it, and Deco pushes the ball by him for 1-0. 16 minutes in and Barcelona is suddenly on the attack and Atletico just let them do it. Not surprisingly, Messi scored the second only 4 minutes later, in the 20th minute. That sort of just killed off the game in a lot of ways and Atletico lost hope for long stretches.

Here’s what I wrote in my match notes about the second goal: “Beautiful play by Messi and Ronaldinho releases Messi and he buries it beautifully. Ray Hudson freaks, naturally, calls it ‘celestial.’ What a 1-2 by Messi and Ronnie, with Ronnie’s pass an utter gem, but Messi’s finish takes the cake.” Ronnie flicked the ball with the outside of his right foot, sending it backwards beyond the defense and then from a tough angle Messi slotted home beyond Abbiati, who could have been Buffon and he wouldn’t have stopped that one.

After the second goal, Barcelona just held possession and kept creating chances. Henry showed up a little bit at this point, though overall he had only a decent game. He looked fit in terms of pace and could easily have scored a couple of goals had the service been just a bit better. Ronnie, though, was the real welcome sight: fully fit, fully in form, and, best of all, running at Atletico’s defense. Some readers may claim that he wasn’t truly back to his greatest, but I have to disagree with that. He was smiling, doing nifty moves, and, best of all, back to his best in terms of passing.

Iniesta was a bit anonymous until Ronaldinho was subbed off, but he and Xavi did fairly well in central midfield. At the outset they look a bit out of their depth, but quickly warmed to the task at hand, which seemed to be getting Atleti to push the ball wide to Reyes and Simão to sweep it in for a header, which, when aimed at Aguero (5′7″) and Forlan (5′10″), had relatively little chance of succeeding. Not that either Puyol or Gabi Milito are particularly tall (both are 5′10″), but Forlan isn’t known for his heading - at least not to me - and so the aerial threat was very small. That Atletico was unable to advance into the Barcelona area with much success on the ground is a testament mainly to Puyol, rather than a team effort. Naturally it wasn’t only Puyol, but I have to agree with Ray Hudson’s assessment that he was man of the match. I wrote at the time: “The whole team played well, but Puyol was everywhere. Messi too was good, but that’s almost old hat now.” Funny to think that way, isn’t it?

Quickly, for you Atleti-knowledgeable people: Ray Hudson mentioned was jabbering on about how Abidal clattered into Seitaridis at one point (and probably deserved a yellow card) and how that made Abidal pretty badass since Seitaridis has a tattoo on his tongue and you just don’t mess with people that way. So does Seitaridis really have a tattoo on his tongue?

Just about everyone in Barcelona’s front line had multiple chances to increase the lead, including Ronaldinho who fired wide from a very good position and then was scythed down. He looked like he injured his knee a little in the collision/act of terrorism, but then he played for another 35 minutes, so I have to assume he’s fine. One thing we don’t need is another injury, no matter who it’s too, but much less to Ronnie. Hell, even Gabi Milito had a chance on goal after a good pull back from Henry.

It wasn’t all Barca, though. Kun had a good chance early on and then in the second half Maxi powered in one hell of a shot from just outside the box that valdes could only slap away for a corner. Christ, what a shot. Luis Garcia had a chance in the 67th minute to pull one back and it was definitely the best chance of game for Atleti, but his chip attempt on Valdes sailed long and high. And where the hell was Forlan? I literally forgot he was on the field for about 50 minutes. That’s not very good if you’re from Atletico. He was just shut down, mainly by Milito and Puyol, but also by Oleguer (Yeah, I know, what?), who had a decent game on the wing. Nothing fancy, but good for his standards. Abbiati, of course, made things that much tougher for them, but really, in the second half, he was pretty damned good. He even stopped Messi 1-on-1 in the 87th, which is crazy. He also stopped a monster rocket flamethrower of a volley from Xavi in the 76th minute, which just happened to be the same minute as I noticed that Eto’o was in the stands wearing a DEA hat. The DEA? Did he start working for the US government or is there another DEA I don’t know about? Regardless, there were few chances for Atletico and it was only because of Abbiati that they remained anywhere near getting points from the match.

Gio came on for Ronaldinho and Iniesta immediately perked up and made some slashing runs through the middle, suggesting, again, that he is more comfortable without Ronnie simply because he has the space to run. Not that I’m suggesting the team is better without Ronnie. And apparently they’re better without Toure too because Phil Schoen said it was the best they’d played this year, which, while true, doesn’t mean they’d be necessarily worse replacing either Iniesta or Xavi with Toure. If you think that way, Oleguer should always start in front of Zambrotta and that’s just retarded (but they haven’t conceded from open play sin.ce Zambrotta went down!). Bojan replaced Henry in the 86th minute* and then in the 89th, Gio got his first assist by feeding Xavi in front of goal after a pretty sweet pass from Deco allowed the young Mexican to show off his tremendous speed before squaring the ball to Xavi for the simplest of tap-ins.

Are we the best team in Spain right now? I think so. RM might have a 2 point lead on us, but would they want to play us right now? I doubt it. We’ll see if things are different by Dec. 23, but for now I’m of the opinion that Barcelona is the team to beat in La Liga, even with all of our injuries. Second in the league, second on goal differential thanks to conceding an extra goal, but better in Europe by a couple of points. Quite a solid team are we, not that RM isn’t. And not that Atletico isn’t either. They’ll be back in the mix after the international break, I’m sure of it.

Now for your highlights: