Atletico Madrid held by Galatasaray to leave top-eight hopes in balance

Atletico Madrid drew 1-1 against Galatasaray in Istanbul to leave their hopes of a Champions League top-eight group stage finish in the balance.

Giuliano Simeone’s second goa l in the competition this season gave Atletico the perfect start after four minutes.

Galatasaray levelled in bizarre fashion at Rams Park when Marcos Llorente, under no pressure from any home attacker, put through his own net after 20 minutes.

The draw leaves Atletico with 13 points from seven games and possibly needing to beat Bodo/Glimt at home next week to finish in the top eight and avoid the play-off round.

Galatasaray complete their group fixtures at Manchester City, with their likely outcome being a play-off tie.

Atletico struck when Matteo Ruggeri broke down the left and Simeone met his cross from six yards out with a firm header.

Galatasaray’s equaliser owed a huge slice of luck after Leroy Sane slipped a lovely weighted pass to Roland Sallai.

The full-back could not pick out a colleague, but Llorente got his feet in a tangle and turned the ball over his own goal-line.

There was a nice flow to the contest, even if openings were rare until the closing moments of the first half.

Alexander Sorloth’s deflected shot was held by Ugurcan Çakir, while at the other end Galatasaray’s Baris Alper Yilmaz was wasteful.

Atletico stepped up the tempo after the break with Sorloth shooting over, Abdulkerim Bardakci hacking off the line from David Hancko, and Marc Pubill heading on to the roof of the net.

Cakir moved smartly to his left to keep out Antoine Griezmann’s late free-kick, and then repelled a powerful effort from Alex Baena.

Galatasaray almost snatched it at the death as Jan Oblak made a point-blank stop from Gabriel Sara, with Llorente going some way to making up for his  earlier error by denying Eren Elmali a simple tap-in from the rebound.

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