Diego Simeone outlines four things Atletico must do to overturn Champions League deficit against Man City

Diego Simeone has said Atletico Madrid must improve in next week’s second leg against Manchester City, if they are to progress to the semi-finals of the Champions League.

Atleti lost 1-0 on Tuesday night in the first leg of their quarter-final tie, with Kevin De Bruyne netting the only goal of the game after 70 minutes.

As expected, Simeone’s men were resolute, well organised and limited the spaces for City to play in at the Etihad, but failed to create enough chances on the rare occasions they got the ball.

In fact, Atletico didn’t manage a single shot across the 90 minutes, and were toothless when going forward.

After the game, Simeone admitted his side will need to be better offensively next week when City travel to the Wanda Metrpolitano.

Asked what Atleti will need to show in that fixture, the Argentinian responded: “Humility, energy, hard work and understanding what the path is and the route where we can hurt them.

“We need to be better, we need to improve,” he continued. “Let’s see if we can have the ball a bit more and create more difficulty for our opponents, but that comes with being calm and having the collective defensive effort. I’ve been shown how to compete until the end in any way you can.”

Stopping an ‘extraordinary opponent’

The 1-0 scoreline from the first leg leaves the tie perfectly poised ahead of next week’s reverse fixture. While City will be in the driving seat, they’ll know the threat that Atletico can cause, and the side from the Spanish capital dumped Liverpool out of the competition two years ago.

Tuesday’s result is evidently one Pep Guardiola will be pleased with, and while Simeone is disappointed to head back with a loss, the Atleti manager explained how impressive it was to limit one of Europe’s top sides to just a single goal at home.

“It’s a bad result because we lost 1-0 and we were playing to win,” said the 51-year-old. “It’s clear we were playing against extraordinary opponents.

“The stats speak for themselves, the amount of goals they score at home, they play in a very dynamic way. We play with that feeling of just wanting to go through using the tools we have against a team with the weapons we have.

“It’s true we defended very well in the first half, it was a massive collective effort,” he continued. “We have to evaluate a really great way of defending without being embarrassed.

“We have to go to Madrid now and play the same. We know they’ll play in the same way and we’ll use the tools we have at our disposal to go through.”