First advice that every student receives at the beginning: do not leave your tasks for the last minute. However, Atlético has gotten used to having to solve the ballot with the pressure of the clock on your neck. An emergency caused by the first half of the game with less and less danger generated and without practically putting rival goalkeepers in trouble.
The rojiblanco team has gone to rest in 15 of the 22 games of this season without having managed to move the handle of his marker. And in the last six, without coming close to achieving it. From Luis Suárez’s goal in the 35th minute of the match at Mestalla, Osasuna, Milan, Cádiz, Mallorca, Porto and Real Madrid have experienced the first 45 minutes of maximum defensive placidity. And it is not so easy to redirect the situation with the emergencies.
Although against Cádiz and Porto he was able to overcome forcefully (1-4 and 1-3 respectively) and Felipe solved the mess in the 87th minute of the duel against Osasuna, in the matches of Milan and Mallorca the coin thrown in the air came out cross, and ended up falling in two duels in a Metropolitan Wanda that this season has been losing the condition of fort. And in the derby against Real Madrid, the only one of those six encounters with a goal from a team in the first half, Benzema was in charge of doing it on an impossible to lift slab. Despite the fact that Atlético changed its starting image after the break with João Félix and Lemar contributing mordant and arrivalIt was Asensio who hit the first change as he had previously happened and the white team took the victory 2-0.
An aggravated problem in the last duels, but one that comes from afar. Although in the first two games of the course Correa did enter with the ability to eat the rival door as soon as he left, getting the first of his two goals in Vigo and the only goal of the game against Elche before the break, subsequently it has been an almost impossible mission to see an early goal from Atlético. After that initial mirage, the mattress team linked seven consecutive duels without scoring in the first half (Villarreal, Espanyol, Porto, Athletic, Getafe, Alavés and Milan), managing to take three of them forward, drawing another three (two 0-0) and falling in Mendizorroza.
They would turn the tables against Barcelona and Liverpool in the Wanda Metropolitano, with the two goals of the team in the first half and entering the games with badly sharpened fangs. But soon the bad habits returned. This Athletic so irregular, that concedes more goals than ever and has lost defensive reliability that had always characterized him, he cannot afford to waste the first 45 minutes.
In total, Simeone’s team he has scored 34 goals so far this year, of which only nine have occurred in the first half. If he does not manage to score a goal against Sevilla before the break, he will link his second streak of the season with seven games in a row without succeeding. An evil that is very difficult to overcome, and where the starting intensity must be increased so as not to always have to go bare-chested in the last moments of matches.