Champions League performance insights: Griezmann leads Atleti's pressing efforts against Celtic

Atlético de Madrid earned their biggest victory of the UEFA Champions League era this week with a powerful team performance against Brendan Rodgers' Celtic.

For UEFA's analysis unit, the aggressive pressing of the Madrid side was a key feature of their 6-0 success in Tuesday's Group E fixture – along with the individual excellence of Antoine Griezmann.

This 3D visualisation illustrates the committed approach of the Atlético players who pressed high in the Celtic half as the visitors sought to build from the back, with even the wide centre-backs, José María Giménez (2) and Mario Hermoso (22), stepping into opposition territory at times.

As a measure of the intensity of their approach, they allowed their rivals a maximum of two passes in 77% of their pressing actions inside Celtic's half. In other words, the Scottish side had little time and space at all.

The video above offers an example of the aggressive attitude of Atlético, with their whole team committed to the task – and virtually all of them, centre-backs included, stepping up into the Celtic half. It tracks Griezmann as he closes down Celtic right-back Alistair Johnson, Atleti's No7 reaching a top speed of 28 km/h in the process.

As the UEFA match observer Aitor Karanka noted, for all the magic in the Frenchman's boots, he has an admirable work ethic too: "He keeps running and defending like any other player."

Karanka underlined too the strong ethos for which Simeone's sides are renowned – "their team spirit and hard work" – and this comes through in their collective endeavour on the pitch. Breaking down the types of pressing from Atlético, the first of the two charts shows that 69% of their actions in the opposition half were a team press – this is a press involving a minimum of five players or a press in a high block.

The second chart repeats the statistic already cited above concerning the intensity of the Atlético press with Celtic allowed no more than two passes in three-quarters of their hosts' pressing actions in their half of the pitch.

To focus on Player of the Match Griezmann, he operated on the left side of the three-man Atlético midfield on Tuesday and in this second video, we see him run upfield to close down Johnson, working in tandem with Rodrigo Riquelme, the full-back, as they press Celtic players on that side of the pitch.

Thanks to their well-coordinated, industrious approach, Los Rojiblancos excelled at reducing Celtic's passing options and the final graphic shows the impact of pressing actions involving Griezmann in particular during his 64 minutes on the pitch. In almost a quarter (23%) of the pressing actions in which the Frenchman took part, Atlético regained possession by forcing Celtic to direct the ball out of play. And, with the passing routes shut off, 31% of Atlético’s pressing actions led to the ball going out of play and Celtic having to restart from a dead ball.

This third video above offers a case in point and it comes from the very first seconds of play on Tuesday: from the kick-off, Atlético’s players hare forward to apply pressure, closing down the goalkeeper and centre-back and blocking the passing lanes, with Griezmann sprinting over to the flank to force Johnson into a misdirected pass down the line.

It is worth adding that Griezmann was not impressive just for his efforts off the ball on Tuesday. This was a match in which he scored twice and helped set up another goal with a magnificent long, diagonal pass to the head of Giménez in the lead-up to Álvaro Morata scoring to make it 2-0.

This final video provides an example of Griezmann at work in the not-so-common midfield role he was filling: he keeps his position as Atlético players advance down the right and it is noticeable that, before the ball comes to him, he is already scanning his options ahead of playing the subsequent pass out left to Riquelme.

In total, Griezmann attempted 56 passes and completed 49 of them (a completion rate of 87.5%). Of those completed passes, he made 42 of them in the opposition half on a night of Atlético domination.