Before the Match
Atletico Madrid have decided to honour their old superstar and Youth academy product Fernando Torres with their club’s highest accolade of the insignia de oro y brillantes. Madrid have wanted to honour Torres for four years but every time his former club Liverpool were meant to play Atletico, he was injured.
Line-Ups
Di Matteo came out this week and stated that as the Super Cup is another European trophy, he would like to win it. This means that he is expected to put out a full strength line up though he would be tempted to rest Juan Mata as he badly needs a break and bring Frank Lampard back into the side as it is very unusual to not play Frank 2 games in a row. Ramires is also likely to make his way back into the starting squad while John Terry might be rested again to make sure he is 100% for the upcoming fixtures. The team could possibly line up like this:
Torres
Hazard-Oscar-Ramires
Mikel-Lampard
Cole-Cahill-Luiz-Ivanovic
Cech
Players To Watch
Ramadel Falcao
Regarded by many as the best Out-and-Out ‘Number 9’ in the world. The Columbian has one of the best goal scoring record’s in Europe and continues to impress. He has been linked with CFC many times over the years and is fresh off a Hat-Trick against La Liga rivals Athletic Bilbao so he should be full of confidence. If we want to win the cup, we will surely have to stop his influence on the game.
Thibaut Courtois
Our Belgian goalkeeper has impressed over the past season on loan at Madrid and has established himself as a future world class keeper. He looks worthy to fill Petr Cech’s boots (or Gloves) when he eventually decides to retire. Courtois has been stirring up Chelsea as of late with some controversial comments. He stated” But I play for Atletico, It’s me against Chelsea and I want to win it”. In the end this is all friendly banter but we would surely love to put a few goals past him and see if his confidence is so high after that.
Prediction
There is no doubt Di Matteo wants to win this match. This is our first official European game of the season and RDM would want to silence the critics who say we can’t go far in European competition this season. This fixture will test us but it will be a good guideline to see just how far we have come against arguably the toughest opposition we have faced this season.
#Jonathan
So dissapointing. 4-1?! Lol I changed the channel when the score was 4-0. Lampard's my all time favourite player but tonight's performance just shows that he can't play as a deeper midfielder assisting Mikel. We had no foothold on the game whatsoever and in my opinion,it was Lampard always going forward making it a 4-1-4-1 formation. A formation the squad is training for. If Lampard was playing next to Mikel covering the defence,we wouldn't have been slaughtered on the counter attack. Three Athletico Madrid goals came from counter attacks and Falcao punished us. I can't do anything but RDM and the board can. I'm sure they can see it because are professionals.
So dissapointing. 4-1?! Lol I changed the channel when the score was 4-0. Lampard's my all time favourite player but tonight's performance just shows that he can't play as a deeper midfielder assisting Mikel. We had no foothold on the game whatsoever and in my opinion,it was Lampard always going forward making it a 4-1-4-1 formation. A formation the squad is training for. If Lampard was playing next to Mikel covering the defence,we wouldn't have been slaughtered on the counter attack. Three Athletico Madrid goals came from counter attacks and Falcao punished us. I can't do anything but RDM and the board can. I'm sure they can see it because are professionals.
the problem with Gio is he’s never rellay lived up to expectations on the field. He wasn’t able to break into Tottenham (and never broke out on the loans he was sent out on). At Mallorca he’s been good (6 goals in 29 appearances) but definitely no superstar (or even star). Not saying he won’t be good (he is relatively young) but his resume is still pretty thin. His most famous feature is still being a barcelona product, but that’s some years in the past