Atletico Madrid smashed hosts Osasuna 5-0 in
the Primera Liga, Wednesday, to achieve its biggest
victory this season and boost their hopes of qualifying
for the Champions League.
Joao Felix put Atletico the most expensive player in
the history of the visiting team in the lead after
controlling a stray ball inside the penalty area before he
hit the ceiling in the 27th minute, and shook the net again
in the second half after a good pass from Diego Costa.
Substitute Marcos Llorente consolidated Atletico’s lead
in the 79th minute and passed to Alvaro Morata and
Yannick Carrasco to score the fourth and fifth goals.
With this result, coach Diego Simeone’s team advanced
to fourth with 49 points from 29 games, two points
behind fifth-placed Real Sociedad, who is visiting
Alaves, on Thursday, while Osasuna is 11th with
35 points.
Simeone said: “We have an amazing squad, and if we
continue to play as we did today, we can progress
whatever we want.”
Atletico played a modest performance in the return of the
league after 3 months of stopping due to the Corona
virus pandemic when they drew 1-1 with hosts Athletic
Bilbao.
But the team responded surprisingly to Osasuna, and
after a difficult first half, Atletico showed no mercy in
the second half and outperformed their biggest away
result this season.
Felix and Costa bore the brunt of the attack to break
Osasuna’s resilience, but Simeone would be happy with
the performance of the team as a whole as well as
the replacements.
Llorente showed his skill to dribble three players before
scoring his third goal in the last 3 away games, after he
scored two goals against Liverpool in the second leg of
the Champions League round of 16 in March.
The midfielder sent a pass to Morata to put it in the net
and stepped in to the video referee to overturn the
referee’s decision to have an infiltration attack against
the Spanish striker.
Substitute Carrasco grabbed the ball from an Osasuna
defender and exchanged its pass with Llorente before
the Belgian player put it into the net, achieving his first
goal since returning to Atletico after a while with Dalian
Weifang of China.
