Real Madrid dominate Atletico Madrid at home in the First Leg of the Champions League Semifinal

First Half

Diego Simeone predicted it in his pre-match press conference, expecting Real Madrid to come out pressing and playing fast. Sure enough, he was dead on.

Just seven minutes into the match, after Ronaldo had floated a chance high over the goal, a great link up between Dani Carvajal and Isco led to the right back, Carvajal, breaking in alone on Atletico goalkeeper Jan Oblak. Oblak made the first save, and bounced the rebound right off the leg of Karim Benzema, who watched the ball float marginally wide.

The early pressure from Real didn’t cease there, as just a couple minutes later, after a corner had allowed the Real Madrid players to push up, an in-swinging ball from Sergio Ramos was nearly cleared, but fell luckily to Casemiro, who provided a stunning assist to Ronaldo for the first goal just 10 minutes into the first leg.

You simply can’t say enough about Casemiro here, who settles the ball, then short hops it off the turf and perfectly to the waiting head of Cristiano Ronaldo who, as always, was ready to aggressively head the ball into the back of the net.

The goal from Ronaldo makes it three straight UCL matches with a goal, with those three matches coming against two very good opponents.

The Real hovering continued, as just minutes later, Oblak was forced to make a last second diving save to prevent Raphael Varane from heading a corner from Toni Kroos into the bottom corner.

The best chance of the night for Atleti came in the 17th minute after the Varane chance, as Kevin Gamiero received a great pass, and was alone on net, just to have the ball ripped off his foot by the diving Keylor Navas.

Other than a very, very close chance from Benzema on a bicycle kick late in the half, and a yellow card for Koke, not a whole lot happened.

Dani Carvajal went down grabbing the back of his leg just before halftime, and was unable to return after the break, and initial reports on Dani’s status aren’t looking good. Carvajal was clutching at his hamstring, which was the same injury that forced him to miss three weeks in January.

It looked, for a moment, like Real Madrid were content with the goal lead and would be dropping back to play more defensive and maintain the lead. That wasn’t the case as we were to see in the second half.