I know this doesn’t live up to some of the brawny, comprehensive previews the devoted readers of this site and my past work have come to know and love, so you’ve been warned in the title. I find my enjoyment of the games is massively enhanced when I have at least a few tidbits to focus on going in, so I hope yours will be as well.
Bookies have Atletico 60% to advance
CL or Europa League Tie?
Dortmund don’t really have any business being in this part of the competition. Of course they played in the group of death and advanced from it, so a hat tip there, but they are outside the top 20 in the CL in Fields Gained ratio, deep completions ratio and xGD. They are broadly playing at maybe a Europa League level in and out of the Champions League (5th in xGD the Bundesliga among really only 5 truly good teams, and 5th by a long shot), they just kind of lucked into 2nd and then lucked into drawing PSV in the Round of 16. Then they also lucked into drawing Atleti, clearly the 7th best team remaining in the competition.
Atleti are just 12th in xGD in the CL (and 13th in Fields Gained and Deep Completions ratio) and a clear step behind the title race in La Liga. A Barcelona team who have shown weaknesses in the CL are 15 xG ahead of Atleti in the league, and they sit in 4th in the real table and 5th in goal difference. So they are not really a team that should be in the CL semifinals, but basically those teams are all on the other side of the bracket or PSG and maybe Barcelona or in the Europa League (Liverpool and Leverkusen). That means we need a winner and a true semifinal underdog here.
Dortmund’s field maps just don’t look very pretty.
Likely Pass Patterns
Using k means clustering to find common pass types for the two teams we can start to see where to expect the ball during play. Dortmund we expect to have the ball around the midfield circle a bit, but rarely to see them inside their own half passing back and forth.
It’s a bit chaotic on the Atleti offensive map, but rarely passing back and forth with the goalie and playing a lot of short balls attacking down the right wing are the two patterns I take in my brain into the match.
Atletico leave the center of the pitch as a total vacuum (last in share of touches in the center), so expect them out wide a lot.
Not your older brother’s Atletico
A bright green attacking map
and a green defensive midfield map
are not the 2010s stereotype of Atletico. They are just 29th in defensive action rate (tackles/interceptions/etc per opponent pass).
What style of ball progression will we see?
The ball moves up and down the pitch a lot as Atleti games are broadly full of pretty horizontal, mostly clean ball progression (10th average progression efficiency between Atleti and their opponents and 26th average verticality). That differs from Dortmund’s typical popcorn style where both teams fire more inefficient vertical balls (20th average efficiency and 8th average verticality). I tend to think Atleti will impose their style as Dortmund sort of just fall into ugly games, it’s not some sort of master plan.
The big star
Antoine Griezmann is by some margin the best player in this game. He leads Atleti in shooting, deep completions, deep receptions, and overall receiving.
Counter weakness?
Both teams show some weakness giving up counters but neither team are particularly lethal doing it themselves.
Dortmund easy to get into Danger Zone against
The 2nd highest rate of opponent passes come in their Danger Zone. I think we will tend to see Atleti moving the ball down the wings pretty cleanly and start to close in on the Dortmund box without too much effort.
Aerially Dominant Füllkrug and Deadball Worries for Atleti
There really aren’t that many dangerous players for Dortmund offensively now, a far cry from the days of Haaland and Bellingham. A great, hardworking winner of headers is Füllkrug, who is a reasonable striker up top. Malen (who is out injured) and Brandt have their moments as well (Brandt is a particularly good receiver) but the lack of pop is noticeable.
They remain threatening on deadballs with Füllkrug and co (6th most dead ball production in CL) while that has been a bugaboo for Atleti: 4th most production allowed.
It’s hard to see why Dortmund are so close to even here, this feels like a 70-75% tie for Atleti over two legs. They aren’t a dominant team but they are better at everything than Dortmund are. Dortmund will have to dominate on set pieces to build any kind of consistent threat. Mentality wise I think Atleti will have to have a big edge as Dortmund are due for a total teardown of squad, staff and ethos as a team.