Que decepcion! It's somewhat simple: Real Madrid played an outstanding match while Atletico barely showed up. Atletico looked uncharacteristically nervous and out of sorts, and never found a rhythm. The analysis is simple and straightforward, but here's a few notes, mostly so I can make some sense of what happened:
1. That Atletico had to go to its fourth RB option hurt the team. Real Madrid looked to take advantage of Lucas at RB by repeatedly attacking down his flank. Plus, Atletico really relies on its wings to attack, which allowed Real Madrid to focus all its defensive attention on Filipe Luis.
2. Koke, Saul, and Gabi completely lost the midfield battle. Koke missed many passes, Gabi wasn't the on-field general he was in last year's Champions League final, and Saul lacked that spark that he can show. Statistics back this up: way too many lost balls and poor passing percentages.
3. Isco was brilliant. I wish Bale had been healthy.
4. I think Simeone has not rested Filipe Luis enough this year, and Luis didn't look at sharp or as fast as normal.
5. Zidane deserves enormous credit for getting the most out of Casemiro (who is so important to the team's structure), Isco (who has played sparingly this year), Lucas Vazquez (I thought he was younger than 25, but he's been fantastic), and Asensio (really talented 21-year-old winger).
6. It is nice to be RM: Danilo - $31M, Kovacic - $29M, Coentrao - $30M all were after-thoughts for the match. Keep in mind that Bale - $100M was injured and James - $75M didn't even play. That's $260M in transfer fees not on the pitch.
6. Gameiro and Gaitain, Atletico's two big signings, have not met expectations this year. Gameiro has had moments when he's shown what he can do (he has 16 goals) but he was largely MIA against Real Madrid. Gaitain, likewise, has been a complete disappointment and offered just about nothing in this match.
7. Carrasco is a fascinating player: so much talented by often a half-assed effort. He seemed to sulk for a lot of the match and did not show much effort on defense. He and Simeone had a bit of a row this year over Carrasco's position: Simeone wanted him to play on the right, Carrasco wanted the left. They made peace, but I still don't think Carrasco likes playing in Simeone's system. It's somewhat akin to Arda Turan who just got sick of having to play so intensely on both sides of the ball and sacrifice his offensive prowess to play so hard defensively.
Anyways, Carrasco was bad like the whole team was bad, but in this particular instance, we needed the best version of Carrasco given his immense talent and didn't get it.