In the opening round of the Champions League play-offs, Inter hosts Atlético Madrid, and PSV hosts Borussia

As part of the next day of the opening round of the Champions League play-offs, two very intriguing matches will take place. In one of them, two giants will meet – Inter and Atlético, and in the other, trendy PSV will host Borussia Dortmund, which once treated its coach Peter Bosz very cruelly.

For the current Champions League, Tuesday, February 20, is, of course, a special day. The starting round of the play-offs, in principle, rarely gives pairs in which it is difficult to determine the favorite and the outsider. And here both are extremely intriguing.

Well, with the couple who brought Inter and Atlético together, everything is crystal clear. An amazing fact: we are talking about two famous football brands that constantly participate in European cups, but so far they have crossed paths only once. The clash happened in 2010, when the Italian and Spanish clubs were fighting for the UEFA Super Cup. Then Madrid, winners of the Europa League, turned out to be stronger than Milan, winners of the Champions League, winning with a score of 2:0.

Their new confrontation in terms of “sign” is a little similar to that old one. In the sense that formally, on paper, I still want to give them slightly different status. “Older” he is again at Inter. Last year he reached the Champions League final, losing to Manchester City, and at least this season does not look weaker. On the contrary, all the interesting ideas of coach Simone Inzaghi seemed to blossom even more magnificently, providing the Milanese with a confident lead in the national championship and reaching the playoffs of the main European Cup, albeit from second place in the group (first according to additional indicators went to Real Sociedad), but without any problems.

Those who like to look for weak areas in club structures will be disappointed by Inter. There are definitely no obvious ones. The defense, as usual, is strong, goalkeeper Jan Sommer is experiencing something like a career peak, there is an abundance of dynamics and density in the middle of the field, the flanks are not acting up, and in front the combination of Lautaro Martinez and Marcus Thuram interacts luxuriously – a real find of Inzaghi.

For Atlético, things are not formally so rosy. He is currently fourth in the Spanish championship and apparently no longer claims gold. At the same time, he has unsuccessful matches from time to time.

But still, this is the good old Atlético Madrid of Diego Simeone – spiky, able to “dry” the game, and on good days, create something extraordinary in front. Real Madrid, for example, became convinced of this in February. In the match with him, Atlético came back literally before the final whistle, but managed to create a lot of difficulties for their neighbor before the goal. True, Inter was lucky that just before the return of the Champions League, the Madrid tandem broke up for a while, which this season was not inferior in efficiency to the tandem of Martinez and Thuram. Antoine Griezmann is in action, but Alvaro Morata is out, inappropriately injuring his knee. This is, of course, a loss, but not so terrible as to equate it to a catastrophic one. Memphis Depay is similar to Morata in terms of habits and functionality.

In addition, there are interesting statistics that insist on the exceptional inconvenience of Atlético for Italian clubs. Of his six previous matches with them in the European Cup play-offs, he won five.

The pair, in which PSV hosts Borussia on Tuesday, is also attractive because of its rather dramatic story connected with the biography of the Dutch club’s coach Peter Bosz. In the summer of 2017, the Dortmund club lured him away from Ajax, not sparing to pay a huge compensation for Bos – about €5 million. Borussia saw him as a mentor who could take them to the next level. And for some time things were going well for the Dutchman. Borussia had a great start to the season, and German publications were already anticipating how, under the leadership of such a creative specialist, they would knock down Bayern’s arrogance.

But suddenly there were failures – in the domestic championship, in the Champions League. Admiration instantly gave way to cruel criticism and ridicule, and Dortmund management did not tolerate it and kicked Bos out in December, giving him only five months to work.

If Peter Bosz dreamed of revenge on Borussia, now is the best moment for it. The German club is still strong (although its fans are probably worried about the leg injury of African Cup hero Sebastian Halle), but the PSV that Bosz created this season looks like a team that even football giants should at least fear. In the Dutch championship he is so bright and convincing that even the February draw with Ajax, that is, in theory a full-fledged competitor, was perceived as a failure.

Alexey Dospehov