Koke explains Atletico Madrid state of mind after ugly scenes in Man City defeat

Pep Guardiola reviews Atletico Madrid Champions League tie

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The match between Atletico Madrid and Manchester City turned sour in the latter stages of the tie, with a mass scuffle between the sides breaking out between the squads. The feisty moments were largely caused by Atletico, but their club captain Koke has that he felt ‘proud’ of his side’s performance.

The match finished 0-0 at Estadio Wanda Metropolitano meaning that City progressed into the semi-finals having won the first leg 1-0. However, the entire clash was overshadowed by the feisty, ruffling-feathers technique embodied by the Atletico squad.

The tactics worked to an extent as there were plenty of unsavoury scenes at full-time and in the tunnel afterwards, but not as much as Atletico manager Diego Simeone would have wanted considering his side were knocked out of the competition. Speaking after the aggregate defeat, Koke said: “I’m proud of my teammates and all of our fans.

“We had so much desire and hunger in order to achieve what we’ve done so far in this competition and now we can be proud of what we tried to achieve here, but we couldn’t quite reach the semi-finals. We tried with everything we had until the very last seconds.

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“We just lacked the goal we were trying for. We knew before the first game what might happen across the tie and what we had to do. It’s easy to criticise us but we leave here proud of our efforts even though, in the end, it wasn’t to be.”

Atletico had three shots on target across the two legs, struggling to retain possession for extended periods of the match due to City’s dominant tactics. Simeone’s side were certainly more attacking in the second leg of the tie, having previously deployed the 5-5-0 formation at the Etihad Stadium.

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But it was Atletico’s display when the ball was out of play that will be remembered, with Stefan Savic letting himself down on the night. After attempting to drag Phil Foden to his feet after a foul, the centre-back then exchanged words with Jack Grealish and pulled his hair before headbutting Raheem Sterling.

The Montenegro international somehow only received a yellow card for his efforts, a decision which former City defender Joleon Lescott couldn’t believe. He told BT Sport: It’s not hard to see, when you look back at that incident as your only job, to see he’s headbutted someone, he’s pulled someone’s hair, he’s pushed someone off the pitch. Over the period of 90 seconds, he’s done all those things, and it’s only a yellow card. I don’t understand what VAR is there for if it can’t make that decision.

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