La Liga in the Champions League: Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid

“Please, no acclaim, I’m just a hum­ble foot­baller… who scored twice from two incred­i­ble free kicks.”

The group stage of the Cham­pi­ons League began on Tues­day evening, and two La Liga out­fits looked to ini­ti­ate the exor­cism of their per­sonal demons.

Real Madrid and its galác­ti­cos played its first Cham­pi­ons League match of the sea­son against an upstart FC Zürich team who, before the match, seemed more inter­ested in whom they would swap shirts.  It is no secret of Madrid’s lack of suc­cess in the Cham­pi­ons League in the past five sea­sons, and even more than recap­tur­ing La Liga from FC Barcelona, Madrid des­per­ately wants to regain their sta­tus as THE team in Europe.

For the first twenty-five min­utes, the team in white played as though it showed why it spent mil­lions of Euros to bol­ster its squad.  The only caveat was that FC Zürich wore the white kit and did not seem the least bit intim­i­dated by Real Madrid, the men in black.  Rather than resort­ing to a direct, long ball approach with phys­i­cal­ity as the answer, Zürich dis­played a flow­ing game of foot­ball, includ­ing an auda­cious attempt at a back-heeled goal in the ninth minute.

The fans chanted, the elec­tric atmos­phere buoyed Zürich to out­play their mod­est abil­i­ties, and they truly believed they had a legit­i­mate chance to obtain a result against Real.  Then Cris­tiano Ronaldo stepped up to take a twenty-five meter free kick and struck it with venom past Zürich keeper Johnny Leoni.  From that moment, Madrid stepped on the pedal and suf­fo­cated Zürich with their relent­less offen­sive pres­sure.  By half­time, Real Madrid engi­neered a 3–0 advan­tage at the Let­zi­grund Sta­dion, and Zürich looked like the long shots that the odds mak­ers thought of them.

For the first ten min­utes of the sec­ond half, it was more of the same from Real Madrid.  Then on a slid­ing tackle of Johan Von­lan­then, Xabi Alonso appar­ently injured his right ankle, and Fer­nando Gago replaced him in the 59th minute when it was clear that he could not carry on any­more.  Madrid lost focus as they cruised with their three-goal lead, and in a span of one minute, they con­ceded two goals to Zürich, which gave them life once again.  While the first goal came as a result of a dubi­ous penalty, sim­i­lar to the Eduardo sit­u­a­tion against Celtic, Real’s con­ces­sion of a sec­ond goal less than a minute later against an infe­rior team was inex­cus­able for a club that has Cham­pi­ons League aspi­ra­tions.  Real would score two late goals, includ­ing another free kick from Ronaldo, but they still have yet to show that they can con­sis­tently keep a tight defense.  Until that hap­pens, the demons will hang around within the team.

“We could not score against APOEL at home!?!?”

Atlético Madrid’s demons were more of a recent phe­nom­e­non.  They tried to for­get a hor­ren­dous 0–3 beat­down at the hands of Málaga and a lack­lus­ter 1–1 draw at the Vicente Calderón against Rac­ing San­tander by cap­tur­ing a win against the Cypriot cham­pi­ons APOEL Nicosia.  Even though APOEL was the bot­tom seed in Group D along­side Chelsea, FC Porto, and Atlético Madrid, none of those teams should under­es­ti­mate this plucky side from Nicosia.  Only look to last season’s Cham­pi­ons League when group stage new­com­ers Anortho­sis Fam­a­gusta wreaked havoc on a group that included Inter Milan, Werder Bre­men, and Panathinaikos.

The first half was tac­ti­cal with few chances.  The two best oppor­tu­ni­ties fell to the boot of Con­stan­ti­nos Char­alam­bides, who made Atlético keeper Ser­gio Asenjo gen­er­ate a ter­rific stop at his near post in the 8th minute and missed a splen­did chance in the 43rd minute when a one bounce cross found his run inside the six-yard box and missed wide from four yards.  Ser­gio Agüero was the bright spot for Atlético as his tire­less engine cre­ated space for his team­mates as well as set him­self for shots on goal.  Diego For­lán and Simão Sabrosa were held in check for the most part due to APOEL’s dis­ci­pline and orga­ni­za­tion in defense.  Already under fire for their mediocre per­for­mances this sea­son, the fans at the Vicente Calderón whis­tled at the play­ers going into and out of the dress­ing room for the sec­ond half and deemed a 0–0 score unacceptable.

Atlético man­ager Abel Resino made an early sub­sti­tu­tion in the sec­ond half, send­ing in winger Maxi Rodríguez for the defen­sive mid­fielder Cléber San­tana in the 51st minute because Maxi would bring more punch in the final third, and Atlético showed that they would be able to put the clamps on the APOEL attack with­out the extra defen­sive mid­fielder.  For the rest of the match, Atlético con­tin­u­ally assailed the APOEL penalty area and goal­keeper Dion­i­sis Chi­o­tis.  APOEL rarely had pos­ses­sion, so this forced a strat­egy to camp ten men behind the ball in the hope that they would some­how pro­tect a 0–0 draw and gain a point away from home.  Resino fur­ther added to the attack in the 67th minute by tak­ing out right back Luis Perea in favor of for­ward Florent-Sinama Pongolle.

Atlético had sev­en­teen shots, nine of those on tar­get, in the sec­ond half but never breached the APOEL goal.  Man of the Match Dion­i­sis Chi­o­tis made some spec­tac­u­lar saves; the most impor­tant of those saves came in the third minute of stop­page time when his leap­ing save pre­vented another For­lán rasp­ing bul­let from head­ing toward the top cor­ner of the net.  For­lán also had a free kick that struck the inter­sec­tion of the post and the cross­bar in the 84th minute.  Not with­stand­ing Atlético’s poor start in La Liga, drop­ping points at home against APOEL when they also have to face Chelsea and FC Porto twice is the worst kind of start pos­si­ble.  With Chelsea look­ing as the favorite to win Group D, these two points dropped could be cru­cial in decid­ing the sec­ond team in the group to advance to the knock­out stages of the Cham­pi­ons League.

Tagged as: APOEL Nicosia, atletico madrid, Champions League, Cristiano Ronaldo, diego forlan, fc zurich, fernando gago, florent sinama-pongolle, La Liga, maxi rodriguez, real madrid, sergio aguero, sergio asenjo, simao sabrosa, Xabi Alonso