Atlético have dominated this fixture since Barcelona’s last win in December 2019, and they got off to a flying start as Yannick Carrasco handed them the lead after only eight minutes. The winger finished low under Marc-André ter Stegen from the center of the box after being teed up by Luis Suárez, returning to Camp Nou to face his old side for the second time.
The visitors’ recent dominance over Barça has been so great that ‘La Blaugrana’ has failed to score in the last three LL meetings between the two clubs, though just two minutes after going behind, Jordi Alba emphatically made sure that barren run came to an end. Meeting across from opposite full-back Dani Alves first time, Alba struck the ball mid-flight with his left foot, and after floating through the air in what seemed like slow motion, it nestled beautifully in the top right corner with Jan Oblak a spectator.
The hosts rallied and completed the turnaround iwithin20 minutes thanks to a deflected header from Gavi, who received the ball from Adama Traoré making the first appearance of his second spell at Barcelona. Ronald Araújo increased Barça’s lead three minutes before HT, reacting quickest after Gerard Piqué struck the crossbar, and with the hosts cruising after the break, Dani Alves added a fourth with his first goal since returning to the Catalan side, running onto Gavi’s deflected cross.
It seemed Diego Simeone’s side was down and out, but in typical Atléti fashion that simply wasn’t the case. They made Barcelona work for the three points, with Suárez heading in from close range to pull one back with 30 minutes remaining before Alves received a straight red card for a nasty challenge on Carrasco.
Despite going down to 10 men, Xavi Hernandez’s men saw out the result, bringing their barren run against Atléti to an end to move into the top four at the expense of their rivals, and deny Simeone surpassing Ferdinand Duačik’s record for the most LL wins as a non-Spanish coach.
