Atletico Madrid’s stumbling LaLiga start continues after home draw with Elche

Atletico Madrid’s winless start to the LaLiga season continued after they were held to a 1-1 home draw by Elche.

Los Colchoneros were looking to respond to their disappointing opening-day defeat to Espanyol and Alexander Sorloth’s opener got them off to the perfect start before Rafa Mir quickly equalised.

Atleti boss Diego Simeone brought on Antoine Griezmann, Conor Gallagher and new signing Giacomo Raspadori in the second half to try and force a result, but Elche held firm for a second successive draw.

The Madrid outfit opened the scoring in the eighth minute after Sorloth latched on to a pass from David Hancko before he lifted above Matias Dituro and into the net.

Elche responded well and fired a couple of warning shots of their own through Mir and Alvaro Rodriguez.

The hosts could have double their advantage through Sorloth when the striker worked his way into the area, but fired his effort straight at Dituro.

The visitors got themselves on level terms on the quarter-hour after a long ball over the top was fed to Rodriguez and he played across to Mir, who expertly dispatched beyond Jan Oblak.

The equaliser still did not seem to wake Atletico up and it took until the 60th minute to register their next shot on target, Sorloth picked out Hancko but he headed straight at Dituro.

Griezmann was introduced with just over 20 minutes to play and tried to inject some energy into Atleti’s sedate display as he saw an effort from distance get save by the Elche stopper.

The hosts should have hit the front with 10 minutes remaining after Marcos Llorente found himself one-on-one with the goalkeeper, but he was unable to turn his shot on target.

Atletico became desperate as the game ticked into stoppage time with both Raspadori and Griezmann trying their luck from the edge of the area, but they could not make the breakthrough as the two teams settled for a point.