Atletico Madrid’s captain Koke – offended by Pep Guardiola’s prickly assessment of his team’s antiquated defensive tactics – hit back at the former Barcelona doyen after Manchester City’s narrow 1-0 Champions League quarterfinal first leg win on Tuesday.
Flying Dutchman Kevin De Bruyne scored the only goal of a tightly-guarded game in the 70th minute at the Etihad Stadium after Phil Foden came off the bench to provide the assist, giving City a slim advantage ahead of the return leg in Madrid on April 13.
Although it initially sounded as if Guardiola had praised the effectiveness of Diego Simeone’s gameplan and defensive strategy, describing the latter’s team as “masters at defending together and sitting deep”, the second portion of his statement seemed to be laced with a touch of sarcasm.
“They played a 5-5, two lines of five. In prehistory, now, and in 100,000 years’ time, attacking a 5-5 is very difficult,” Guardiola went on, speaking to Movistar.
“There’s no space. They’re very competitive, they defend well. It’s hard, you have to have patience.”
Guardiola’s “prehistory” comment is obviously open to interpretation as a criticism targeting Atletico’s approach as antiquated.
“In love with your story regarding PREHISTORY,” Koke responded in an Instagram story posted on Tuesday night, with an image of the Atletico Madrid badge, ending up with “Proud to be Atleti.”
With Atletico focused predominantly on parking the bus in their half of the pitch, they didn’t register a single shot on goal during the match. City, on the other hand, clearly frustrated by the defensive ploys of their rivals, only managed two shots on target themselves despite dominating 70% of the possession.
“In their last 20 games here, they’ve scored 60 goals,” Simeone told Movistar. “We tried to keep it tight and use the counter-attack. They didn’t get a shot on target in the first half, but we couldn’t hurt them either. It was a very tactical game.”
“We defended quite well all game, except for the goal,” Atletico goalkeeper Jan Oblak said.
“City play like that, they have a lot of possession against everyone, not just us. If you go crazy, they’ll punish you. Luckily we kept a cool head and closed off the spaces… We lost but the tie isn’t over.”