Lokomotiv Moscow hosts Atletico Madrid in round 2 of the Champions League group stage. The match will be played on Tuesday, October 1st at RZD Arena (Moscow)
Lokomotiv is holding the third Russian championship in a row in a very high-quality manner: Semin’s team shares 2–4 places with Zenit and Rostov and lags only 2 points behind CSKA. Everything is well-deserved in terms of the game: according to the expected points (xPTS), the Steam Locomotives are second with the score of 21.43 with 23 real points - an excellent result. Let's talk about the match against Zenit: in the recent game at Cherkizovo, Lokomotiv won absolutely deservedly and in its style. Loko gave the initiative and space to Zenit (in terms of possession, the Blue-Whites won 53:43), but it defended very well (Zenit delivered only 3 shots from the penalty area (total - 5) and did not create obvious goal attempts, xG = 0.25). The Locomotives created more attempts - they delivered 9 shots (4 - from the box) and created one obvious goal attempt, xG = 0,76. Counterattacks are one of Lokomotiv’s strengths: the team has already scored twice after counterattacks in this season (it shares first place in the RPL with several clubs). On average, Yuri Semin’s team delivers 1.2 shots after counterattacks (here is the first place with a margin – Krasnodar is the second with 0.9 shots). Such a feature can greatly help Lokomotiv in this Euro Cup campaign.
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Atletico held an excellent match against Real Madrid - the positional defense of Simeone’s team was just on a cosmic level: Atletico coolly squeezed an opponent from its penalty area – the Whites shot from it only three times, delivering 14 shots, most of which were distant (“shots of hopelessness"). Simeone was well aware of the opponent’s problems, so he decided to play in that style. The idea worked perfectly: Madrid did not attack through the pivot zone and made many high crosses (27 for the whole game). And it delivered only 1 shot after those crosses (it happened because the additional central defender created a comfortable ratio of players inside the box during crosses) Atletico delivered 7 shots per game (6 from the penalty area) and created 2 obvious goal attempts. To summarize, Atletico coolly kept Madrid and, with fewer shots, created more obvious goal attempts than its opponent did.
Atlético will have a lot of initiative, and it is likely to win (if there are no anomalies in conversion). The only thing that can bring results to Lokomotiv is a counterattack, but it will be very difficult for Lokomotiv to create them in the match against Atlético. If we compare the current shapes of teams with their versions of the end of the 2017-2018 season, we can say that both Lokomotiv and Atlético became better: Loko got very high-quality midfielders, Atlético became much more diverse than before – the team of Diego Simeone learned how to create many attempts in matches against parking middle-class clubs and outsiders. Of course, there will be no 1:5 (Lokomotiv risked a lot in that game), but I expect that Atletico will create many attempts near the box of Lokomotiv and will confidently win.
Prediction for the match: Atletico Madrid to win
