from arsenal.com
Match officials
Experienced official Davide Massa has been overseeing matches in his nation’s top-flight for 14 years. It’ll be his first return to Emirates Stadium since our 3-0 win against Monaco last December, which was his fourth match of ours, following on from a 2-1 Europa League defeat to Olympiakos back in February 2020 plus wins at Qarabag and Eintracht Frankfurt in that competition between 2018 and 2019.
His last Atleti match saw him issue red cards to Pablo Barrios and now-Gunner Hincapie as they beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 in the league phase back in January. Across his seven matches in all competitions this season, Massa has shown 25 yellow cards but no reds, and has awarded just one penalty.
Referee: Davide Massa (ITA)
Assistant: Filippo Meli, Stefano Alassio (ITA)
Fourth official: Matteo Marcenaro (ITA)
VAR: Daniele Chiffi (ITA)
Assistant VAR: Jerome Brisard (FRA)
Previous meetings
The only previous meetings between ourselves and Atletico Madrid in Europe came in the semi-finals of the 2017/18 Europa League. Things were looking promising for us in the home leg when Sime Vrsalijko was sent off 10 minutes in and Alexandre Lacazette put us in front, but his international teammate Griezmann struck eight minutes from time to level things up heading to Spain.
There, Diego Costa’s finish put the hosts ahead just before half-time, and they held on to their lead to extinguish Arséne Wenger’s final hope of finishing his legendary tenure with a first European trophy. Atleti went on to beat Marseille 3-0 in the final, with Griezmann scoring twice.
However, Atleti have never won away to an English side in the group/league phase of the Champions League, failing in all five attempts to date (D2 L3). Los Rojiblancos have also only won one of their last nine matches against English sides in European competition (D2 L6), against Manchester United in the second leg of a last 16 tie in the Champions League in March 2022.