Wasteful Atleti plays out stalemate with Espanyol
Atletico Madrid had 25 attempts at goal but could not find a breakthrough as it was held to a 0-0 draw by Espanyol in LaLiga, frustrating coach Diego Simeone.
Espanyol is the only team yet to score in LaLiga and showed no signs of breaking its duck in a one-sided contest at Estadio Civitas Metropolitano.
Yet despite mustering 2.71 expected goals (xG), Atleti was unable to blow the door down.
New signings Julian Alvarez and Alexander Sorloth came close to opening the scoring in the first half, while Rodrigo Riquelme had two goals chalked off for offside, the first after a lengthy VAR check and the second in stoppage-time.
Espanyol's rearguard held firm as goalkeeper Joan Garcia made seven saves to deny Simeone's side all three points.
Simeone bemoaned his side's wastefulness against one of LaLiga's promoted teams.
"It worries me, as always, but I can't stop appreciating the good game the team played. When you have five clear goalscoring opportunities like the ones we had?" Simeone said.
"Well, they didn't go in, but the opportunities we created were the result of our play, not by chance. We expected to win, but they defended well and we were not convincing. If you don't score, it's very difficult.
"The team played very well, they made a very strong start to the first half. Then we dropped off a bit, that's why we made the changes. In the second half, we didn't have so many chances to score, but we played well."
Simeone made three changes at half-time to freshen things up, with Antoine Griezmann, Marcos Llorente and Pablo Barrios coming on, although eyebrows were raised when struggling striker Sorloth, a big-money addition from Villarreal, was replaced by defender Reinildo.
"We never changed the system, we continued with a 5-3-2 to balance the team, which was starting to split," Simeone explained.
"The opponent could also hurt us and we balanced the middle with Llorente and Barrios."
