Atletico Madrid goes into this second leg tie with a 1-0 aggregate lead and know a draw will be good enough to see them through to the Champions League semi-finals. But they cannot afford to sit back as Leicester City are a dangerous team, with lots of pace and trickery from Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy, so they will have to show some attacking ambition of their own. It should make for a thrilling tactical battle.
Many expected Atletico to blow Leicester away in the first leg, but this author predicted a low-scoring win for Diego Simeone’s side and that came off. It nearly did not happen as Atletico Madrid had to rely on a dodgy penalty decision to scrape their 1-0 victory. But they were predictably superb in defence. Once again they have the strongest defensive record in La Liga and after a rocky start, they are back up to third in the table after overhauling Sevilla. Atletico changed their approach at the start of the season and were scoring plenty more goals than usual, but also conceding a lot more. But as the campaign has progressed they have gone more and more back to their old ways of grinding out narrow victories. They have conceded a lot fewer goals than Real Madrid or Barcelona, but they have scored 23 fewer than Real and 32 fewer than Barca. Their last four games saw them beat Leicester 1-0, draw 1-1 with Real Madrid, beat Real Sociedad 1-0 and Malaga 2-0.
You would, therefore, expect another low-scoring game here. Atletico are clearly the superior side and should get a result at the King Power stadium. Leicester are much improved of late but have taken just one point from their last two league games to leave them 12th in the table. The third best team in Spain should be beating the 12th best team in England. Leicester have struggled to cope with the loss of N’Golo Kante this season, while he has inspired Chelsea to top the table. Wilfred Ndidi has emerged as a decent replacement in recent weeks, and new boss Craig Shakespeare has reverted to the formula that helped them win the title last season. Long balls into the channels for Vardy to chase down, Shinji Okazaki buzzing around, Mahrez menacing all the time, swift counter-attacks… They have rediscovered the winning formula and it worked in the immediate aftermath of Shakespeare’s appointment, but they have now gone three games without a win, and beating Atletico is just such a tall order.
On paper putting Antoine Griezmann up against Wes Morgan and Robert Huth just looks a total mismatch. They are strong but limited defenders, and a player with his intelligence, movement and finishing ability should cause them all sorts of problems.
Atletico are favourites to win this but the odds are good: 23/20 with Coral and 11/10 with most green listed bookmakers. Atletico draw no bet is around the 3/5 mark, so that looks another good option because Atletico knows a draw would see them through to the next round.
Leicester are not a defensive team by any means and they will have a right go at Atletico, but if any defence can withstand that pressure it is Atletico’s. They have had the meanest defence in La Liga for several years now, and their philosophy of pressing hard and high up the pitch makes them extremely difficult to play against, leading them to two Champions League finals in recent years. The under 2.5 goals looks interesting at 4/6 with green listed bookmakers. To get more value and cover yourself a bit more, you could back Atletico and the under 3.5 goals at 9/5 with Bet Stars and the draw and under 3.5 goals at 3/1 with the same bookmaker.
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