Atlético Madrid stunned Barcelona with a 2-0 away win on Wednesday in the Champions League quarterfinal first leg.
The game was turned on its head in a two-minute span late in the first half. First, Barcelona’s Pau Cubarsí was shown a straight red card for denial of an obvious scoring opportunity. On the ensuing free kick, Julián Alvarez scored a brilliant effort to give Atlético the lead.
Alexander Sørloth scored a second goal for the visitors in the second half, giving them a massive advantage heading back to the Spanish capital for next week’s second leg.
Barcelona had been the better side for much of the game but a foul on Giuliano Simeone by Pau Cubarsi just before half-time proved pivotal.
The defender was initially shown a yellow card by referee Istvan Kovacs after sending Simeone flying as he broke through one-on-one, but that was changed to a red card when Kovacs was asked by the video assistant referee to review the incident on the pitchside monitor.
Alvarez then compounded Barcelona’s misery by superbly sending the free-kick beyond the goalkeeper’s reach and into the back of the net.
To Barcelona’s credit, they responded well to going a man down and dominated the second half, with Marcus Rashford going closest to equalising when he hit the crossbar from a free-kick.
But instead, they were dealt a further blow when Atletico grabbed a second, Alexander Sorloth sweeping home from Matteo Ruggeri’s low cross.
The defeat leaves Barcelona with it all to do when they travel to Madrid in the second leg next Tuesday.
Barcelona will have gone into this game fully confident of getting a win, given their recent results.
They had won eight and drawn one of their previous nine games in all competitions, with their last outing before Wednesday seeing them win 2-1 at Atletico Madrid in La Liga.
They certainly had chances to continue the momentum in this game as they had 24 attempts on goal, with the lively Rashford seeing a couple of efforts saved as well as having a strike chalked off after Lamine Yamal was ruled offside.
Culled from USA Today, BBC
