AC Milan 1-2 Atletico Madrid: Three Things We Learned

We saw another night of entertaining Champions League action on Wednesday with a whole host of fun games to digest and sink our teeth into. One of those went down in Italy as AC Milan played host to Atletico Madrid, and while we all knew it was probably going to be a good one, few could’ve imagined it would be quite as dramatic as it turned out to be.

Milan took an early lead but two goals in the final 15 minutes of the game, including an incredibly late penalty, turned the fixture on its head and handed all three points to the visitors.

Atletico get out of jail

There’s the old saying of needing to “dig deep” but we don’t really think that applies to Atletico Madrid here, because Milan did most of the work for them. The fact that Porto held them to a draw in the first matchday, combined with this result, would seem to imply that they’re in for an absolute slog if they’re serious about progressing to the last 16 of the competition this year. Fair play to Griezmann and then Suarez for scoring, with the latter being an unbelievably late penalty, but they need a bit more than that if they’re going to contend this season.

Milan’s spirited resistance

“AC Milan is back” was the message in the stands and while they may have come away empty-handed, that’s a statement we’d like to reiterate. Milan were ultimately the masters of their own downfall, but they still managed to hold onto a lead for over an hour with just ten men on the pitch. That’s a special kind of grit and determination which they also showcased against Liverpool, and if they can get a result against Porto, they’ll be right back in the mix.

Group of Death delivers again

Liverpool’s dominant win over Porto seems to put them in pole position as the favourites to win the group but they haven’t come up against Atletico yet – and given that Milan are the only team without a point despite being really competitive in their opening two fixtures, we’d say it’d be foolish to write this group off just yet. It was always going to have pressure on its shoulders with the distinction of being the Group of Death and we think they’re living up to expectations quite handily – which goes for all four teams from top to bottom.