Atletico Madrid – Real Madrid, Champions League – Prediction

Real Madrid has an advantage and will benefit from it.

Real have a one goal lead from the first leg, which makes me confident in what Ancelotti will do. Real will have six men behind the line on the ball, willing to give even possession to Atletico in certain periods of the game, and the main goal will be to have spaces to counterattack. Valverde will have a key role in supporting the attacking four, which will now be at full strength after Bellingham was sent off in the first leg. Real don’t go inside their penalty area, they don’t fall into a deaf defence, but they are lined up in the space between the centre circle and the penalty area.

How will Atletico Madrid play though?

This is already quite complicated. If one were to play the first meeting between the two teams and focus only on the times when Atletico was losing on the scoreboard, you wouldn’t see much difference in the style of play. Atletico are drawing the ball out with the main aim being to create attacking corridors in the penalty area for Griezmann and Alvarez to burst into. As the game progresses, sooner or later Diego Simeone’s men have to go on the attack and that will open up a lot of spaces for the big personalities at Real Madrid.

Both teams should score in this game.

Ancelotti has done everything necessary this season to get his big four on offense into a one-team model, but it’s still not perfect. These two teams know each other extremely well. They have played twice so far this season, but both of those games were at the Santiago Bernabeu. In both, there were goals from both teams. This season, Atletico Madrid has been acting a little more forward on the pitch, but that doesn’t mean that the basic precepts of play that Diego Simeone has have changed. He’s just trying to pull the lineup further forward to shorten his players’ path to the opponent’s goal. My prediction in this match is Both teams to score at odds of 1.57.