La Liga defending champions Atletico Madrid will travel to Italy and face AC Milan at the San Siro in the second gameweek of the UEFA Champions League 2021/22. The home team lost their opening match of Group B against Liverpool, and Atletico played out a goalless draw against Porto.
Let us take a look at the stats of both the teams in their previous match.
AC Milan lost their opening game of the group against Liverpool at Anfield by a scoreline of 2-3. The Italian giants sit at the bottom of the table after round one and will look to bounce back against the Spanish team.
Ante Rebic led the line for the Rossoneri and the team lined up in a 4-2-3-1 formation against Liverpool. Rebic and former Real Madrid player Brahim Diaz scored the two goals for the Italian club towards the end of the first half. The above viz shows the creation zones and the expected threat from passes. AC Milan attacked from the left side and youngster Rafael Leao operates from that side for the club. He was supported by Theo Hernandez and the visual shows that they are much stronger going forward from that side. Some of the play was also created from right, but the players were unable to get into the box from that side.
AC Milan attacked well against a very dangerous Liverpool team, but their defenders were unable to win most of their defensive duels. Milan led the scoreline by 2-1 towards the end of the first half. The team was unable to defend and conceded within the first three minutes of the second half. The four defenders and two central midfielders contested 56 duels in the whole match. They only won 14 duels, lost 31 defensive duels and the rest of the duels were neutral.
Rafael Leao was a constant threat from the left side and the Portuguese even provided an assist in the match. Tomori was also good defensively and the Englishman won five defensive duels and lost only one duel in the process.
Tiemoue Bakayoko, Rade Krunic, Alessandro Florenzi and Zlatan Ibrahimovic will be the notable absentees for the home team.
Atletico played out a 0-0 draw at home against Porto in their first match. Both the teams created very few chances in the match.
Simeone played a 3-4-2-1 formation and Suarez led the line for the team. He was supported by Lemar and Felix. Luis Suarez attempted three shots towards the goal but was unable to score. Atletico players were defensively sound and Jimenez was the most impressive defender. The Uruguayan won five aerial duels, made three recoveries in the opposition box and even delivered six passes into the opposition final third. The team made 27 recoveries in the opposition half.
Atletico main problem in their previous game was scoring goals and creating enough chances. The Spanish team only attempted six shots and two shots were on target. The shot map shows that only two shots were attempted from inside the opposition box and the rest of the shots were long-range efforts.
Savic is still suspended for the away team, but Koke, Felix and Lemar could feature after missing the recent matches due to injury.
Both the teams will look to bounce back after disappointing results in the first round. Atletico will look to defend and Simeone will expect his forward players to score their opening goal of the campaign. Milan will have a hard time scoring against a tight Atletico match.
