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An Eric Garcia own goal opened the floodgates early on before Antoine Griezmann, Ademola Lookman and Julian Alvarez added to Atleti's jubilation.

Giuliano Simeone tested Joan Garcia early on, but the goalkeeper was caught out in the sixth minute. Eric Garcia played a blind back-pass to him, and he let it roll under his foot, leaving him unable to scramble it off the line.

Eight minutes later, former Barcelona player, Griezmann, doubled Atletico's lead. It was swept out to the right, and Nahuel Molina teed up the Frenchman to slot his low strike into the bottom-left corner.

Fermin Lopez then struck the bar as Barcelona looked to respond before Alvarez saw an effort cleared off the line by Jules Kounde. Molina then fired over the bar, but Lookman guided Alvarez's clever lay-off into the bottom right corner to add their third in the 33rd minute.

In the second minute of first-half stoppage time, Lookman returned the favour, pulling it back to the Argentinian, who rifled in his first goal since early December.

Pau Cubarsi thought he had pulled one back six minutes into the second half, but the goal was ruled out following a long VAR check as Robert Lewandowski was offside in the build-up.

Atleti continued to dominate, and Barcelona's game went from bad to worse in the 85th minute as Eric Garcia caught Alex Baena with a high tackle, and the defender's yellow card was upgraded to red after a VAR review.