Atletico Madrid vs Sevilla

San Francisco’s Oracle Parc is the venue as Atletico Madrid and Sevilla go head-to-head in an all-Spanish pre-season friendly.

It’s not been the best of pre-seasons for Atletico Madrid by any stretch of the imagination, as they’ve delivered a mixed bag of performance across three summer friendlies (W1, D1, L1). A scoreless draw against fellow La Liga rivals Real Sociedad brought back old memories of an uneventful Atletico side during Diego Simeone’s early regime. However, it was their first scoring blank after netting multiple goals in six consecutive matches, including a 2-1 win over last season’s treble-winners, Manchester City, a fortnight ago. It’s encouraging ‘Los Rojiblancos’ have kept a clean sheet after five straight failed attempts, not to mention three of those saw them concede at least twice.

In the meantime, Sevilla couldn’t have picked out a better moment to get back to winning ways after three consecutive winless games within 90 minutes (D1, L2) as they overcame cross-town rivals Real Betis 1-0 in their most recent friendly. But Europa League-winning manager Jose Luis Mendilibar cannot be happy with his team’s attacking displays this summer, particularly in light of a four-game run in which his men scored precisely once. That’s an ominous sign, considering they’ve averaged only 0.66 goals per match in their last three meetings with Atletico (D1, L2). They’ve only netted over 1.5 goals in one of their five previous H2Hs outside Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan.