Los Rojiblancos beat Barcelona 2-0 in Wednesday's (07.04.26) first leg to take command of the all-Spanish quarter-final tie and the coach was impressed with his team's "collective effort" as he earned his first win at the fabled stadium during his long reign as Atleti boss.

Simeone told Movistar: "It's true we hadn't ever won here at this stadium. It's very difficult to do.

"[Barcelona] are maybe the best team in Europe with Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich. We did good collective work, we hurt them in important moments, and the second goal gave us more security. It's a shame we couldn't hurt them a bit more with the [man] advantage we had."

The Argentine coach praised his team for being "extremely clinical" against 10-man Barca but warned his players that they will have to "suffer" during next week's second leg.

Simeone said: "Football is great because being clinical is key, and today we were extremely clinical.

"We knew they play with a high line. We're a team that have hurt them in almost every game we've played against them, we've always created chances and scored goals.

"It was hard, it's not a coincidence they'd won 22 out of 23 games here [this season]...it's good result but they're an opponent who will for sure make us suffer (next week)."

Julian Alvarez opened the scoring for Atleti with a sublime free-kick and revealed that he tried to replicate Barca legend Lionel Messi with the set-piece.

He told ESPN: "I've watched Messi's goal against Liverpool [in May 2019] here [at the Camp Nou] several times, but I wasn't entirely sure it was going into that exact corner.

"Once you strike the ball, you realise it, and even before I kicked, I was already quite certain. We were practising yesterday and I hadn't converted a single one. Today was what mattered."