Champions League performance insights: How Atlético and Inter fared in the final third

It took a penalty shoot-out to separate Atlético de Madrid and Inter in the UEFA Champions League round of 16 this week. Yet to go beyond the drama of Atlético's comeback and concluding spot kicks, for the UEFA analysis unit one of the more intriguing aspects of Wednesday's second leg was the contrasting way the two sides attacked. In the following article, they break down various elements to explain the routes to goal taken by both Diego Simeone's hosts and Simone Inzaghi's visitors.

This first chart offers a breakdown of the two sides' final-third actions. In each category, Atlético had more possession in the final third – be it by advancing the ball into it (entrance) or winning it inside there (regain). It was actually from a restart in their attacking third that they scored their equalising goal – a throw-in from the left.

The video above shows us that restart and as the sequence unfolds, there is an attempted clearance by an Inter player yet the Italian side do not gain control of the ball, meaning this is categorised as a single possession sequence from Atlético and it concludes with the opportunistic strike by Antoine Griezmann which made it 1-1 on the night.

In this week's FedEx analysis article on this match, the UEFA analysis unit highlighted Inter's patient approach in possession, with long passing sequences featuring plenty of rotations. The video above offers one such example from a contest in which the Serie A leaders had a notably high number of final-third entries via ten passes or more. As another measure of the way they looked to circulate the ball, they had more touches (1,027) than any other team in Champions League action this week.

Atlético had less possession (47.5%) than Inter on Wednesday night but a greater goal threat. This second chart breaks down their types of attack and shows that Atlético had a greater proportion of attacks both in organised possession (against a low block) and with transitions – winning the ball in the opposition half (counterpress) – than Inter did.

Both teams had roughly the same share of final-third actions via counterattacking (21% for Atlético, 22% for Inter) but the visitors had more entry attempts with breakthroughs – which means through moments of controlled possession against a high or mid-block (albeit more a mid-low block in this game).

This third video gives two examples of Inter's counterattacking threat at the Metropolitano. We define a counterattack as occurring when a team win the ball in their own half and then progress to the final third before the opposition have reorganised properly. And so, though they showed patience with their above-mentioned passages of ball circulation, Inter also carried a threat on quick counters.

The first clip shows an early counterattack which brought a chance for Denzel Dumfries, and the second the breakaway in which Lautaro Martínez put Marcus Thuram through on goal in what was a key moment of the second half, with the teams tied at 1-1 with 14 minutes remaining.

These two pie charts display the number of attempted penalty-box entries by the two teams and underline that Atlético, chasing the game following their first-leg loss, were the ones knocking on the door more often. They had more than twice as many attempts to penetrate the opposition box (69 to Inter's 29), albeit a smaller success ratio (37.7% to Inter's 41.2%).

A factor worth mentioning is Atlético's high number of crosses (39), which was a strategy which reaped mixed rewards against an Inter side who won 61.5% of their aerial duels. Ultimately, though, the persistence of the Madrid side told given they did achieve 26 entries to the visitors' 12 en route to getting the win they needed on the night.

The final graphic of this analysis is a 3-D visualisation which shows the different entry locations to the penalty box for the teams. In the case of both Atlético and Inter, we see more central (or lane 3) entrances. It is worth spelling out that this does not apply solely to attempts to play through the middle but also includes attacks where a ball came in from a wide area and the first contact was in lane 3.

As mentioned in the performance analysis article, lanes 2 and 4 can be fertile territory from which to cross the ball and both sides were noticeably active in that left-sided lane 2.

This last video shows the second Atlético goal on Wednesday which came from a central penetration. For all of their attempts to penetrate the Inter area with crosses, the key moment came via lane 3 with Koke finding a central path to goal with his through ball to Memphis Depay.