Atlético vs. Inter: crucial duels

Atlético de Madrid-Inter, in the second leg of the round of 16 of the Champions League, features crucial duels on the field, between Antoine Griezmann and Alessandro Bastoni; Álvaro Morata and Yann Sommer; Lautaro Martínez and Jan Oblak; Matteo Darmian and Samuel Lino or Federico Di Marco and Nahuel Molina, among others.

• Griezmann-Bastoni:
  “His entry into the team gives us more solutions and more possibilities both at a tactical and game level and we hope he has the game he wants to play,” Diego Simeone said this Tuesday about Antoine Griezmann, who returns directly to the starting eleven after four games. as the engine of Atlético’s confidence in the comeback, despite the fact that they chained a sequence of eight consecutive duels without beating the rival goal. His ability is crucial to the team. As is Inter’s release of the ball through Bastoni, who acts as one of the highest caliber defensive elements of the Italian block at the Cívitas Metropolitano.
• Morata-Sommer:
  Far from being the highest scoring version of him, of the 19 goals with which he had a key impact in Atlético’s most powerful moment this season, Morata has only scored one goal in his last ten games. Atlético also longs for goals from him, which needs its greater offensive power to believe in turning around the round of 16 series. In Milan he missed the last opportunity to tie with a header. Up front, Yann Sommer is a wall. In his journey of 35 duels this season he has only conceded fifteen goals. In 23 of those games he kept a clean sheet, including eight of the last ten. Only Athletic Club managed to do so in the last 30 games against Atlético at the Metropolitano.
• Oblak-Lautaro:
  In Atlético’s goal, Jan Oblak competes against doubts. The dimension of his extraordinary figure in the past, capable of the implausible, is no longer so. Nor the defensive firmness of his team, which faces a litmus test against Inter, but, above all, against Lautaro Martínez. He is the most obvious threat in attack of the Italian team, which Oblak left to zero in San Siro with two centered headers. The goal was scored by Marko Arnautovic, who is out this time at the Metropolitano. The Argentine attacker has scored 26 goals in 35 games. And he arrives rested. He did not play any minutes in last Saturday’s 0-1 victory against Bologna for this Wednesday’s match against the Slovenian goalkeeper, who has kept a clean sheet in twelve of his team’s 41 games, but only in one of the ten most recent.
• Linen- Darmian:
  The wings are two essential sectors for both teams, formed around the 5-3-2 to give movement to their full-backs. On the left, Samuel Lino is a winger converted into a winger. His offensive tendency, his verticality, his dribbling, his daring, have been a source of chances for Atlético, although his current decline currently coincides with that of his team. He has scored six goals and given five assists, but the last one was ten games ago. In the 2-0 against Valencia. On the contrary, at Inter, Matteo Darmian won the competition for the starting job against Denzel Dumfries. Unlike Lino, he is a winger who is now a winger. He has given away a goal and scored another.
• Molina-Di Marco:
  Nahuel Molina is emerging as one of Diego Simeone’s three new additions against Inter, thanks to the arrival of Marcos Llorente in the center of the field. His recent poor performance exposes him as one of Atlético’s most vulnerable sectors… compared to Di Marco, one of Filippo Inzaghi’s basic footballers. His four goals and his eight decisive passes to his teammates in this exercise are a demonstration of his offensive virtues. The Argentine world champion is better at the top than at the back. It is an unpredictable factor.
• Barella-Llorente:
  The delivery of the ball, the organization, the pressure and the positioning that Nicolo Barella brings to Inter, whether as a right midfielder or as a centre-back, give Inter calm and firmness on the field, alongside Hakan Calhanoglu and Henrik Mkhitaryan. with the mobility they have in that sector of the field. Marcos Llorente will break into that area again for Atlético, if Diego Simeone maintains in the game everything that he has tried in the last two days, with the strength, power, verticality, unchecking and projection that he can give to Atlético; between the current decline of Rodrigo de Paul and Koke Resurrección, two essential figures also for the red and white team’s options in the second leg.