In the Zone: Atlético de Madrid 6-0 Celtic performance analysis

Atlético de Madrid achieved their biggest UEFA Champions League victory of the Diego Simeone era against Celtic on Tuesday with the aid of an outstanding performance by Player of the Match Antoine Griezmann.

In this analysis brought to you by FedEx, UEFA match observer Aitor Karanka looks at how Griezmann, playing in a deeper role than usual, helped orchestrate his side’s 6-0 Group E success at the Estadio Metropolitano.

Formations

Features

What was so impressive about Griezmann’s performance was the fact he excelled in a position he does not normally play. When you play in midfield, you have to interpret the game in a different way and, from a tactical point of view, he understood his role perfectly. With the ball, we saw him give passes of the highest quality and step forward to score goals. Without the ball he showed the capacity to help his team out defensively and also win back possession. As the videos below show, he gave a performance that had just about everything.

Griezmann's technical and tactical impact

Griezmann is a player who is intelligent above all. He knows what his team needs from him, no matter what position he is playing. On Tuesday, Atlético needed him to provide defensive balance without the ball and with it they needed his passing and movement, coming inside and leaving the left wing free for Rodrigo Riquelme to attack. We see an example of this in Clip 1 of this first video as he occupies space inside while Riquelme pushes high up the left flank.

This first clip also shows where his passes ended up over the course of the evening. Overall, Griezmann attempted 56 passes and completed 49 (a pass completion rate of 87.5%). Of his completed passes, 42 were in the opposition half. To be even more specific, he made 30 passes in the attacking third and across the eight games played on Tuesday, only Manchester City's Jack Grealish and Leipzig's David Raum produced more key passes than the Frenchman's four.

The second clip shows Griezmann's positioning during another Atlético build-up. We see him orchestrate the play, pointing out to Koke which passing option to take, and his average position is highlighted here too. Griezmann's coach, Diego Simeone, knows him perfectly and he would have played him here for the best of the team. In previous group games, the No7 had operated as an attacker but against Celtic, Joaquín Correa played as a forward, using his speed in transitions, with Griezmann's deeper role allowing him to demonstrate his intelligence.

The video highlights different elements of that intelligence – the positions he takes up, his awareness, his ability to see the big picture and play the pass (see the crossfield pass in Clip 3). Afterwards he spoke to a reporter about "watching a lot of football on TV" to understand this midfield role and this shows us why he is at the level he is at – at 32, he has the hunger to keep improving.

Griezmann's touch of magic

The second video above begins with Griezmann's exceptional crossfield pass to José María Giménez in the lead-up to Álvaro Morata's first goal. This is a player who does everything for a reason – he sees the opportunity and with his quality, his class, is able to realise the pass.

Clips 2 and 3 show his own two strikes on Tuesday night, starting with his spectacular second goal. In Clip 2 you see his striker's instincts at work as he takes advantage of the space in the box afforded by Atlético's numerical advantage. In the build-up to Griezmann's first goal (Clip 3), he acts as a midfielder picking up a second ball on the edge of the box, but here he is a striker operating in the spaces where he plays more regularly.

With his two goals past Joe Hart, Griezmann now has four from 13 shots in the group stage this season. Only team-mate Morata – with five goals from ten shots – has more in the competition at the time of writing, and the quality of the pair's finishing helped Atlético end Tuesday with six goals from a match in which their xG was 3.05.

Griezmann's impact out of possession

You have to remember that players like Griezmann reach the highest level because of how they work for their team. When you have to defend, you defend, and Griezmann is in an Atlético team renowned for their team spirit and hard work. He may be the player with the most plaudits and prizes, but he keeps running and defending like any other player.

The first clip of this final video gives us an example of Griezmann's work out of possession as he races back to block an attempted cross by Daizen Maeda. For a player more accustomed to playing up front, it's not necessarily easy to have the level of understanding needed to do a job defensively but he had it in abundance, providing cover, for example, when Riquelme stepped up.

The second clip shows Griezmann sprinting to close down Celtic full-back Alistair Johnston (reaching a top sprint speed of 25km/h, as the video highlights). According to the data from my colleagues at UEFA, of the pressing actions involving Griezmann, Atlético won the ball back almost a quarter of the time (23%).

To end with a general point on the game, I would say the sending-off had a big impact. At 1-0, Atlético had dropped back and were comfortable defending in a mid-to-low block, which made it difficult for Celtic to find the space to progress the ball. Later, despite their numerical disadvantage, Celtic carried on playing their normal game, bringing the ball out from the back, and Atlético won a lot of balls with their pressing. And where other teams might have applied the handbrake at 3-0, they kept going for more and managed to sustain that intensity with the help of Simeone's substitutions.

Coaches' and players' assessments

Diego Simeone, Atlético de Madrid coach: "It's true that we ended up with one player more but we carried on running all the same for the whole match, playing at a very high rhythm. We started the match very well and then had an extra man, which can generate many more opportunities to cause them damage and to attack. The team didn't drop their rhythm at any point. They kept looking for more.

"[Griezmann] is one of the top scorers in the history of the club. He is hungry. We asked him to play in midfield and he interprets that role and plays it like you have to play as a central midfielder – he gets to the goal, he assists, he works hard. I am fortunate as a coach to have a player like Griezmann."

Brendan Rodgers, Celtic manager: "For a team like ourselves coming here at 11 vs 11, we'd have to be at our real max to be looking at getting something out of the game. Once it goes so early to 10 vs 11 it becomes a real challenge for us, and as the game goes on we tire and they were scoring from all angles.

"I'm disappointed with the first two goals and we didn't deal with the second phase of corners well."

Antoine Griezmann, Atlético de Madrid forward: "Like in the national team, I played a little bit further back today, trying to create the play for the team – winning back balls and doing what a midfielder does. I always try to give the best of me in whatever position I play and today it went very well."