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"They will not have the opportunity to give more than two or three touches!" That was the warning of Diego Pablo Simeone while his soccer players tried to reproduce on Thursday in two intense rounds the swarm of pressure and intensity that Liverpool will undergo on Tuesday (21.00, Movistar Champions League).
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The current European champion returns to the stage where he was crowned against Tottenham with the aura of being a more intractable team than he was then. Opposite will be the most irregular and smoothed Atlético of recent times. Never in a Champions League qualifier during the Simeone era did the team arrive in that condition of inferiority. When he eliminated Barcelona twice, Bayern Munich or Chelsea, the feelings he conveyed were different.
The appointment invites you to describe an Atlético against everything. Against their ills and against the set that marks the paradigm of the current panorama through a game that contains a great variety of records and resources. Liverpool and its storm soccer will measure a red and white team line by line that has not just met. Oblak and his defense will have to counter the devastating trident of Firmino, Mané and Salah. The midfielders will pass the test of the revolutions and the pressure after loss that the players of Jürgen Klopp make with unwavering faith. If Atlético claims to be an intense team, Liverpool arrives with the vitola that nobody surpasses that either. For the rojiblancos strikers, the company of battling with the chief Van Dijk and the beefy Matip is also a challenge in which losers start out.
During these days, Atlético players have appealed to the heart and the volcanic environment that will be generated in the stands. A priori, the football arguments they have taught so far this year do not seem to reach them to eliminate a team that in five days can be proclaimed champion of the Premier League. “I trust my players a lot, the stadium will explode, they have a vibrant stadium that will make us suffer when we go, but the same will happen in the Wanda,” ventured Simeone. The argument that the Argentine coach is better handled when his team is left for dead or the competitive nature of the group in appointments in which he is declared in clear inferiority are also among the arguments that try to minimize pessimism among the locals.
Simeone has recovered Diego Costa, but everything indicates that it will be Morata and Correa or Vitolo who will form the attack. João Félix has not been able to arrive on time for the appointment, nor has Trippier and the Colombian Arias.
The duel on the benches also promises from the viscerality and passion with which Simeone and Klopp live the matches. "People say that I am very emotional in the band, but I am a level 4, and he is 12 of what the matches live," said the German. “I am at the nursery level with respect to him. It has been eight years and still maintaining that level of emotion, is something impressive. Their teams are always organized at the level of the best in the world. Atlético is a well-oiled machine, ”added Klopp.
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