In last UCL night, RB Leipzig smacked Spurs around, winning 2-0 on the night and 3-0 on aggregate. Atalanta and Valencia produced a goal-fest at Empty Mestalla as Atalanta won 4-3 away (8-4 on aggregate). So what have we learned from last night?
Leipzig 3-0 Tottenham
Sabitzer the winning key
Marcel Sabitzer was that man and against Spurs not only did he carry on his ferocious driving leadership from the first-leg but this time he turned into a goalscoring hero.
The Austrian hammered Leipzig into a massive 10th minute lead when he followed up an attack, picking the ball up at the edge of the box and driving it low and hard at goal. With one foot already on Spurs’ neck, Sabitzer struck the killing blow himself by arriving late in the box with a stooping header to bury Spurs and send Leipzig into their first-ever Champions League quarter-final.
Poor Lloris & Spurs' Bundesliga fear
As much as Sabitzer will rightfully take the glory for his match-winning brace, Spurs fans will have watched the game confident in the belief that the Austrian shouldn’t have scored either of his goals. Both goals showed good intent and ambition, but the goalkeeping… oh my.
Hugo Lloris is one of the least reliable “elite” goalkeepers in the world. One minute he looks a colossus, the next a crippling liability. A perfect example was how he was superb for France in the quarter-final and semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup but then in the final he “did a Karius” and was lucky that Les Bleus were already 4-1 up so the goal meant nothing.
Tonight, Lloris was as weak-wristed as he’s ever been. Sabitzer’s first goal was a nice hit to be sure, but Lloris had a clean look at the Austrian and it wasn’t like the thing flew into the back of the net. Lloris dove too late and too weakly and it was 1-0. Then later Sabitzer’s header caught Lloris out at the near-post, where the Spurs captain was caught well out of position and allowed Sabitzer to score from an utterly ridiculous angle with a header that was sent more in hope than expectation.
The third goal was one where you couldn’t blame Lloris, his defenders did nothing to clear the ball before Emil Forsberg scored with his first-touch. But by then the damage had been done. Spurs needed a magic act to turn this tie around, and Hugo Lloris’ delivered a horror show instead.
After Spurs ended their UCL journey, their record against Bundesliga team this season is also concluded: 4 defeats, 2 against Bayern (with a 7-2 defeat at home) & 2 against Leipzig, plus 14 goals conceded. Are they really fearing of Bundesliga team now?
Is Mourinho out of magic?
In 2009/10, José Mourinho won a Treble with Inter Milan. Also in 2009/10, RB Leipzig participated in their first-ever season as a club (they were founded in May 2009). Now a decade later, things have changed considerably.
Leipzig have risen from the fifth tier of German football to the Champions League and José Mourinho has fallen from the only man capable of stifling the greatest club side of all-time to looking like he runs a mobile phone repair stand that’s inset into a fabric shop.
Mourinho’s men played the most generic and boring style of football imaginable and got slapped around by some Champions League rookies. To say nothing of how he must have sapped the morale of his own players by saying, of his injury-wracked squad, that he was “heading into a gun-fight without any bullets.” What kind of motivational talk is that???
Obviously Spurs have serious injuries in attack but there are still options that the Portuguese coach could have turned to in order to try and pick up a win. Some wrinkles he could have thrown in to confuse or offset Leipzig. But did he? Did he try anything as interesting as the basic move of putting Samuel Eto’o at right-wing? Or Pepe in midfield to be a hatchet man? Did he try anything? No, no he didn’t.
José Mourinho is a spent force in elite football. If his disastrous spell at Manchester United hinted at that, his current run at Spurs culminating in this dismal defeat in Leipzig has proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Valencia 3-4 Atalanta
4-goal Ilicic
Ilicic is the 4th player to score four goals in a single UCL knock-out game, and also the eldest. And he is also the first-ever player to do it away from home.
In fact, Ilicic is Atalanta’s top goalscorer in both Serie A and the Champions League this season, bagging 15 in the Italian top-flight, while getting his name on five in Europe. He is also the club’s joint-second top assist provider in Serie A, setting up five goals on domestic soil.
And tonight Valencia simply couldn’t handle the Slovenian, who looked threatening every time he received the ball, handing Diakhaby a night to forget as the defender proved guilty of numerous aberrations at the back. His four-goal haul tonight was simply outrageous, and those waiting in the pots for the quarter-finals should be extremely wary of this free-scoring beast.
Gasperini's tactic leads to the goal show
It’s not just that Gasperini has assembled a side replete with rich creative talent, but that each player brings a unique dimension to the table. The Italian tactician has a number of different combinations and line-ups he can deploy, but no matter the composition, his high-pressing, free-flowing system thrives.
Gasperini tends to adopt a 3-4-3 formation, but he has proven reactive on the touchline and can deviate slightly from this set-up, making in-game changes depending on the opposition and how his side are performing — iterations of 3-4-2-1 and 3-4-1-2 have been utilised for example.
At the Mestalla, Atalanta switched between 3-4-3 and a 3-4-1-2, shifting to the former when Duvan Zapata entered the fray on the stroke of half-time. And here is the prime example of Gasperini’s flexibility; instead of making a like-for-like substitution, central midfielder Marten de Roon was replaced by a striker.
The change allowed Mario Pasalic to drop back and function as an ultra-energetic No. 8 alongside the industrious Remo Freuler, leaving Gasperini with a blend of creativity, physicality and directness across his attacking trident.
Atalanta’s philosophy has largely been to just outscore the opposition this season, and well, when you’re able to conjure up scorelines of 7-1 over Udinese, 5-0 over AC Milan, 7-0 over Torino and 7-2 over Lecce, not to mention sticking eight past Valencia across two legs, who can blame them.
But, sooner or later that buccaneering, swashbuckling approach will catch up on them, particularly against more competent, experienced sides in this competition. The quarter-finals are awash with well-established, elite-level teams, who will capitalise on even the slightest fragility at the back.
Gasperini has effective, efficient centre-backs, but when they are caught out of possession high up the pitch, which often proved the case tonight, they will get punished, and Valencia duly took their chances when the Italian’s were either squirming back or not quite focused.
In just eight Champions League matches this term, Atalanta have conceded 16 goals, only Spurs (17), Genk (20) and Red Star Belgrade (20) have conceded more this season, while they have only kept two clean sheets — things will have to tighten up defensively if they are to stand a chance in these latter stages.
It made for a highly entertaining evening of football, and on reflection, few can criticise a game in which Atalanta won 4-3, but as previously alluded to, against more defensively resilient sides, this could prove their downfall.