Atlético are not going through a good moment and they were aware of importance of this game when they went out into the pitch. Champions League spots are getting extremely hard to reach and Cholo Simeone, within the few options that he was among the roaster due to the several injuries, made some tactical changes such as putting Koke,who is just coming back from an injury, in front of the midfielders line turning the system into a 4-3-1-2 for the first part of the match. This variation allowed Atlético to speed up their ball movement and their forwards Correa and Vitolo to find more space.
On the other hand, Granada left some of their most important players on the bench such as Rui Silva, Carlos Neva, Antonio Puertas and Carlos Fernández ahead of this week´s historical Spanish Cup semifinals.
The Rojiblancos reflected their superiority since the beginning of the game in what it has been without any doubt their best start so far this season, and they forced Granada to fall back early in the match.
A throw-in taken by Saúl Ñíguez provoked a huge mistake between Granada players Yan Eteki y José Martínez, who ran over each other when they were trying to kick the ball away and Koke took it to assist Correa to score the only goal.
Atlético kept the high rhythm for the first twenty minutes until Granada got into the game, but they were unable to shoot to the Atlético´s goal in the first half. On the other side Atlético started to loose too many balls in the middle due to their increase on their circulation, which held us back from expanding their lead before halftime.
But Atlético´s good performance in the first half turned out to only be an illusion as Simeone´s squad once gain decided to just get rid of the ball and focus on defending in order to hold the win, which allowed Granada to grow in their game, although they barely created any danger upwards.
Atlético looked for counterattacks to kill the game and was close to find it through a couple shots by Saúl and Carrasco that were close to go in, but Granada stayed alive until the end. Soldado had their clearest chance from a back heel shot that Oblak deflected brilliantly to save his team again, which ended up suffering to add a very important win in the run for the Champions League.
