No Villarreal, You Cannot Have Points

By: Al | March 16th, 2009

…said Atlético Madrid after Antonio Lopez scored the match winner. With his goal, a match packed with stupid Villarreal goals and Atlético domination was finally laid to rest with yet another Atlético victory. I love and hate these types of matches. Don’t think for a moment that I was scared at all when we were 2-0 down. Not at all! Fine, don’t believe me.

I was salivating over this fixture right after the Champions League elimination. What better way to redeem ourselves than defeating the team directly above us in the league standings? None really. We did it but it wasn’t easy.

And did Forlán score again? Yes, he did. Nineteenth goal of the season.

ATLETICO MADRID 3 – VILLARREAL 2

Do you think that we actually like being behind by two goals and having to come back? It happened against Barcelona a few weeks ago, and it happened again yesterday. The match should have been 1-0 in the first few minutes after Aguero was fouled in the box, but Forlán’s penalty was stopped by Diego Lopez. This Diego Lopez guy is quite something. Well, at least he was in the first half.

It wasn’t until after one of our (many) corner kicks, Villarreal counter-attacked and scored their first goal thanks to that stupid Chilean wunderkind Matías Fernandez. It was a very frustrating first half because Atlético was the team that was dominating but was constantly denied by Diego Lopez’s brilliance and the crossbar. If we take advantage of easy chances more often, we’d be much higher up the league standings. Seriously.

When Villarreal scored their second goal in the second half, Atlético scored a minute afterwards. Resilience like that is probably something that Resino brought to the team, a “score right the f*ck now” mentality. Sort of like how when we got scored on against Madrid last week, we managed to get a perfect shot on goal and only have it bounced off the woodwork. As usual, Aguero was the one taking the honors for the goal, even if it was a tap-in. It was still amazing, because it is Aguero after all.

The game took a turn for the better when a Villarreal player was sent off. “Yes, lets pound the shit out of their goal now that they are a man down!” thought the Atlético players. But no, master Pellegrini substituted Rossi and threw out another defender for the sake of defending the hell out of their box. “Not so fast”, thought Abel Resino. Since all Villarreal had was Guille Franco in the attack, Resino got rid of Heitinga and threw in Sinama-Pongolle. Quite the risk, but now we had Aguero, Forlán, Maxi, Simao, and Sinama on the attack. More than enough to take on 5 defenders.

And it was. We indeed pounded the hell out of their goal. We had so many corner kicks all match. It was actually frustrating seeing so much attack and that “1-2” on the top right of the television screen left intact. At this point, Villarreal pretty much had little to no shot at a win, and the path was laid out for our team to win it once and for all.

Forlan, the antagonist of the first half, scored the leveler and was immediately forgiven for the penalty miss. It still wasn’t enough, and what seemed like a million shots on goal and corner kicks still couldn’t get us that 3-2. Then, after another corner kick, Antonio Lopez sealed the match right then and there. Villarreal had no response except a Marcos Senna free kick that he shot too hard over the goal.

Then came the worst moment of the match, which wasn’t either of the Villarreal goals. No, it was Forlan’s amazing miss when he was one-on-one against Diego Lopez. Aguero was running down the right flank and crossed it to an un-marked Forlan, who instead of faking out the keeper or lobbing the ball, rolled the ball onto the crossbar like a moron. The game was already won, but wouldn’t a 4-2 be better? C’mon, Uruguayo.

This victory makes it 2 points from Villarreal and 8 from Sevilla now. We’re now in 5th place and are in an overall better position than the other teams. Remember, they still have to play Real Madrid and Barcelona, while we’re done with those fixtures from hell. We’ll get into a Champions League spot so Resino can stay longer and Aguero won’t be tempted into going to Inter Argentina. Another shot at a Champions League season? Yes, I want that.

If you’re not tempted to watch Atlético matches yet, start right the hell now. This is a hell of a team to watch.