Three days after the defeat against Majorca, Osasuna also got a victory at Manzanares. Pepe Murcia’s players didn't find the way to impose their law in front of the strong Navarrese team that, although they didn't show a brilliant game, they knew how to manage the times and how to achieve the three points thanks to Muñoz's lonely goal.

The match didn't begin well for Atletico’s players, since Valera suffered at 2’ an injury and left the field letting his place to Petrov. The first approach of Pepe Murcia’s players arrived in a kick-foul by Peter Luccin that Ricardo stopped, but the answer by Osasuna was lethal: at 15' the visitors open the scoreboard thanks to Muñoz's crossed shot… once again Atletico was forced to play against the score, with the additional thing of having in front one of the most compact teams in the championship. In spite of everything, Fernando Torres insisted on finding a hole in the Navarrese lines: from the wing, looking for the fake, moving away from the area to help in the creation of the game... he even played an arrival in which tried an impossible control back from the goal that took him to the floor. Definitely, the luck wasn’t in the red-and-white side.

At the second half things could change when Clavero saw the second yellow card and he had to abandon the field. They were 30 minutes still in which Atletico should’ve taken advantage of the numeric superiority to look for the tie. Javier Aguirre reinterpreted the situation very cleverly and he retreat the team, order that his pupils executed perfectly joining lines and covering holes against the red-and-white offence that hardly was able to come closer with danger to Ricardo’s area. The entrance of Maxi and Marques in the match neither gave new airs to the offensive game of Atletico that saw impotent how minute by minute the match was going away, and with it, all the hopes of the ‘colchoneros’ for achieving a positive result. The expulsion of Ibagaza at 90' after giving an unnecessary stamp to a defender was the definitive thing for Atletico that already watches Europe as something practically unreachable.


Photo: J. A. Sirvent