ATLETICO MADRID defender Filipe Luis sees similarities between his side’s run to the Champions League semi-finals and Leicester City’s stunning march towards the Premier League title.
Just as Leicester have defied the odds, Atletico have overcome a lack of spending power compared to their Champions League rivals to reach the semis and tomorrow night’s meeting with Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich.
“Look at what is happening this year with Leicester, they are a modest team and are almost champions in the Premier League,” said former Chelsea defender Luis.
“Epic things happen in football. Although there’s a difference in our budgets we are the team that plays most as a team.”
He belives a ‘team-first’ ethic had helped Atletico level the playing field.
“We don’t have a megastar, we have a team where everyone runs, everyone fights for the player next to them, and that makes us stronger,” he said
“The team thinks a lot collectively, nobody thinks individually, that’s the most positive things that we have.
“We’ve had a lot of bad and good moments in the season and now we are stable, we have players who are getting better and better.”
In a competition that increasingly throws up familiar fixtures in the knockout phase, this is a rare example of a new combination in the latter stages.
Atletico and Bayern have only crossed paths twice before – in the European Cup final itself in 1974.
Bayern snatched a late equaliser in the first game which ended 1-1 and won the replay 4-0, with both games played at the Heysel Stadium.
If Bayern were in any doubt about the difficulty of taking on Diego Simeone’s side on their own turf, they need only look at the statistics. The club have won 24 of their last 29 European fixtures at the Vicente Calderon – including beating Barcelona 2-0 in the last round – and have lost only two.
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