Atletico Madrid took a firm grip on their Champions League \u2060quarter-final as goals from Julian Alvarez and Alexander Sorloth earned a 2-0 first-leg victory over 10-man Barcelona at the Camp Nou.<\/p>\n
Barcelona dominated proceedings, but Atletico’s rock-solid defence combined \u200cwith swift \u2060counter-attacks paid off after Pau Cubarsi was sent off for hauling down Giuliano Simeone in the 42nd minute as the last man.<\/p>\n
Alvarez \u200cbrilliantly curled the resulting free kick from 25 metres \u2060into the top corner in \u200cfirst-half stoppage time to silence the sold-out \u2060Catalan \u200cstadium.<\/p>\n
Rashford struck the crossbar from a free kick soon after half-time but Simeone’s side remained \u2060disciplined and doubled their lead in the \u206070th minute when Mateo Ruggeri crossed from the left and Sorloth volleyed in from close range, sealing a decisive away win.<\/p>\n
In the Europa League, Cucho Hernandez’s second-half penalty earned Real Betis a 1-1 draw in the first leg of their quarter-final at Braga.<\/p>\n
Florian Grillitsch had got the hosts off to a fast start with a clever finish after five minutes, but Betis responded well and hit the post through Marc Bartra while Lukas Hornicek denied Hernandez.<\/p>\n
The Spanish side levelled just after the hour when Hernandez converted from the spot after Abde Ezzalzouli was fouled.<\/p>\n
Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Atletico Madrid took a firm grip on their Champions League \u2060quarter-final as goals from Julian Alvarez and Alexander…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-388871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}