Match Preview : Barça VS Atalanta- UEFA champions League

A quick one this time around, as we move into our final UEFA champions league game of the newly formed league phase format. Live once again from the Estadi Olympic Lluis Companys, its Barca up against Atalanta.

Fortunately for us, we have already secured qualification within the top 8 of the league, thanks to that incredible comeback against Benfica just the other week. With that being said though, we still have a chance secure 2nd spot in the league, which is a very important thing, especially when it comes to the next round of games in the knockout phase.

Atalanta are a very strong team, recent winners of the Europa League too. They’ve got a number of strong, experienced and talented players in their squad and they are capable of scoring a lot of goals. There’s a little less pressure on this game, seeing as we are already qualified, but it still is an important game and it definitely will be a test for Flick’s side.

A Quick Look at the opponent:

As mentioned above, Atalanta are now slouches. They are a very good team and will pose a different kind of threat to what we’ve been used to.

They’re capable of scoring goals and scoring a lot of them. I can imagine that they wont sit back tonight. Like many games in Europe, they’re a team that will play. They wont sit back as much as Benfica did last week and play on the counter, but of course, they’re have the quality to be able to adapt their game to a similar sort of thing.

Our highline will most likely intrigue the Italians Too. So we have to be wary of that. I guess a big piece of news coming into the game is that their talisman Ademola Lookman will miss tonight’s game due to injury. And that’s a huge loss to Atalanta. He really is one of their stars. Regardless, they’re still a very strong opponent and will test us a lot later tonight. Pulling on our recent form is what we need to focus on to get us through a very tricky game.

Predicted lineup:

As for the lineup coming into the game, I don’t really expect too many changes from the weekend. We absolutely destroyed Valencia the other night which alllowed us to rest and rotate quite a lot of key players as a result.

Pedri was out through illness but he will definitely return to the lineup. I would also like to see Cubarsi rested in this one, with Araujo coming back to partner Eric. Fermin simply can’t be dropped after that remarkable performance on the weekend, so id imagine hell get another start, which is brilliant.

Casado deserves a break too, he’s been solid all season long and id be really excited to see a double pivot of Pedri and Gavi, with Fermin as the number 10. Yamal and Rapha will of course keep their place and although i expect Lewandowski to return to the starting eleven. I wouldn’t be against seeing Ferran as the striker once again, after a really good display against Valencia. Our play was definitely a lot more fluid with him there.