The Athletico game will be very interesting and they will give us a hard game. However, if we can't beat them over 2 legs we wouldn't win it anyway.
They are a very sly team and we'll have to be absolutely on form against them. There's masters of the footballing "Dark Arts" like Mourinho with his negativity, Klopp and his diving army, Tuchel's cheekbone smashers, Pochettino getting his players to kick anything etc but Simeone is on another level completely. He knows he won't be able to win a fair game. I expect a lot of niggly fouls, shoving of our players, shirt pulling, getting in the refs face, clutching their faces after a tackle etc. Hopefully Rodri will know the story book on this one. This will be a real test and I can imagine Pep's blood pressure will be off the scale in both games.
They will sit back happily and soak up the pressure and counter us. That's what worries me in all these games in that it's a very simple formula but it works. If we let them score early on, they will shut up shop over both games and we will struggle in that case.
I do think we'll beat them and we will have then to play some big teams if we're going to win it. In some ways if we beat PSG, Sporting Lisbon, Athletico, Bayern and Liverpool on the way to lifting the cup, we've deserved it. We've beaten the 'best' teams in France, Portugal, Spain, Germany and England then!
My biggest feat though is that we get Liverpool in the final and Pep "overthinks" it. I just hope this year he just plays a normal team with no surprises. if we lose with a normal team, I'll take that. I want to look at the team sheet and just see players who normally play in a role they normally play. Nowt weird.
At the end of the day, if you want to win the CL you're going to have to play the best teams.
