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Barcelona's Luis Suarez celebrates after scoring his side’s
second goal during a Champions League quarter-final.
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However sleepily Barcelona began its Champions League quarterfinal tie with Atletico Madrid, Fernando Torres sounded an alarm.
A big one. Two, in fact.
Torres both scored and was sent off within a 10-minute stretch in the first half, and Luis Suarez scored twice in a furious rally to lift Barcelona past its La Liga rivals 2-1 at the Nou Camp.
In a wildly entertaining, frequently out-of-control affair, Barcelona turned in a sluggish, blunt first 45 minutes by its standards, which allowed Atletico to wrestle away possession for extended periods of time.
The visitors’ work rate was high, pressing up the pitch and being opportunistic going forward while still dropping numbers behind the ball to deal with Barcelona’s nightmare attacking trio of Suarez, Lionel Messi and Neymar.
It all paid off in the 25th minute with what could prove to be a huge away goal. Koke put through Torres with a nice ball through the center of the defense, and Torres coolly put it away:
As stunning as the goal was, the game took an even more stunning turn in the 35th minute. Already on a yellow for a silly challenge earlier, Torres earned a second yellow for clattering into Sergio Busquets’ plant leg well after he’d passed the ball:
Barcelona’s energy understandably went up as Atletico hunkered down, but the second half is where the Catalans really began to dominate.
By mounting constant pressure on the ball, wheeling the fullbacks forward and pushing defender Javier Mascherano into a defensive midfield position, Barcelona created an impenetrable arc around the Atletico box and unleashed a torrent of chances until Suarez finally scored in the 63rd minute:
Even then, the goal was less vintage Barcelona and more a product of the suffocating swell of pressure. Dani Alves’ cross was long and Jordi Alba’s far-post attempt was off, though Suarez did well to steer it into the net.
The second goal saw Barcelona at its best. Alves played a gorgeous touch cross into the box, which Suarez snapped into the net with a bullet header:
With 15 minutes plus stoppage time left and Atletico wobbling, it felt like more goals were in the offing. They never materialized, however, and the visitors, however fatigued, seemed happy with the result after the final whistle.
They should be. Barcelona is still favored to go through, but a 1-0 Atletico win at the Vicente Calderon Stadium in the return leg certainly doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. The club’s defense has been exemplary all season, yielding just 25 goals in 46 matches across all competitions, including just five in nine Champions League matches.
Of course, two of those came in Tuesday’s second half, which seemed to shake Barcelona out of its funk after watching its 39-match unbeaten run come to an end in last weekend’s El Clasico. Plus, Barcelona has already done the double over Atletico in La Liga, and with Suarez, Messi and Neymar pronging a world’s worth of talented attackers, the Catalans can expect to score anywhere they play.
That said, they may well be undone from within. Suarez earned a yellow card in the 70th minute for shoving Atletico defender Filipe Luis to the ground, and the temperamental Uruguayan striker had several other instances in which his anger got the best of him, including kicking out at countryman Diego Godin after giving up a goal kick in the first half.
On a different night, he might have been sent off. On this night, Barcelona proved superior.
On next Wednesday night, the fun begins again.
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