Bayer Leverkusen take slim lead in Round of 16, defeat Atletico Madrid
Hakan Calhanoglu scored a second half goal as Bayer Leverkusen ground out a 1-0 first leg victory over Atletico Madrid Wednesday night and the Round of 16 tie remains wide open heading for the second leg in Madrid on March 17.
A huge save from keeper Bernd Leno and a willingness to chase every ball to break up Atletico's attacking fluency combined to be enough for the Germans to take their single goal advantage to Spain. But they struggled to create enough chances against an Atletico side dealing with injuries and won more because of their effort than any technical edge.
Diego Simeone's game plan seemed to be for Atletico to absorb early, then try to grab an away goal later. It worked until Calhangolu produced a fine finish and when Tiago was sent off with 15 minutes to play Atletico had to tend to protecting their slender disadvantage and could not throw players forward in search of that equalizer.
The best first half Bayer chance fell to defender Emir Spahic, whose speculative, long-range drive flew past Miguel Angel Moya's leap but clanged back off the crossbar and post at the top left corner in the 26th minute. There were a couple of scrambles in the box that favored Leverkusen, one forcing Mario Mandzukic to clear his own goal line, and another bringing a good reaction from Moya to fist a Karim Bellarabi cross away from the head of Josip Drmic.
Simeone had to make two enforced changes, as well, taking off Guilherme Siqueira in the 38th minute, then Saul four minutes later, both of the Atletico players collecting first half knocks. Atletico had already missed Koke (hamstring) who failed to make the 18.
The introduction of Jesus Gamez for Siqueira Atletico seemed to produce a spark and they well could have scored twice in the closing stages of the opening half as Leverkusen lost its way and the visitors produced their best spell of the night.
Leno had to react quickly in the 39th minute to sweep an Arda Turan cross off Antoine Griezmann's head, then produced the match-saving effort four minutes into stoppage when he one-handed a Tiago drive away from his left-hand corner. The shot came through heavy traffic the Leverkusen keeper could not have seen it until the last second.
Leverkusen finally goy their reward for hard work 12 minutes after the restart when Karim Bellarabi carried into the box on the top right, drew three defenders to him and then slipped the ball through to the open Calhanoglu. The resulting shot was a rocket that whizzed past Moya to the opposite corner.
Atletico thought they were level with 15 minutes remaining when Fernando Torres was open at the far post to tuck in a corner kick that was flicked on across goal, but the goalline official ruled the ball had gone out of play at the near post before being passed to Torres.
Then, when Tiago collected a second yellow card in the 75th minute, Atletico had to survive the final stages with 10 men. Leverkusen could not add to their advantage, however, so Simeone probably left for home feeling some level of confidence for the second leg. Bayer's Roger Schmidt might feel his side's effort was worth more than the slender edge gained against last year's beaten finalists, who have been hard to beat in their Vicente Calderon Stadium.
