Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone praised his team's outstanding young players after a much-changed starting XI secured a 0-0 draw at home to Bayer Leverkusen on Wednesday evening, sealing a 4-2 aggregate passage to the Champions League quarterfinals.
Atletico are in the UCL last eight for a fourth consecutive year under Simeone's guidance, although the team has changed a lot over that time, as former stars including Diego Costa, Thibaut Courtois and Arda Turan left the club in big money transfers.
With a number of regular starters missing through injury and suspension, the starting lineup for the return game against Leverkusen featured recent youth team graduates Saul Niguez [22], Thomas Partey [23] and Lucas Hernandez [21], with 22-year-old Argentina international Angel Correa in attack.
The Los Colchoneros coach told his postmatch news conference that he was especially impressed at the impressive work done over time in bringing through players who were far below the first team when he arrived in December 2011.
"It is a great effort by the players, great work by the club," Simeone said. "We always want to improve and move forward. The Champions League is special and it's very important for the club to be in the last eight.
"The thing I most liked was that four years ago I saw Thomas and Saul play in the Segunda B division with our youth team. Now they are in the senior side helping to progress to the [Champions League] quarterfinals, with Lucas playing in the same game."
Although there was never any real sense of Leverkusen possibly overturning the 4-2 scoreline from the first leg in Germany last month, Atletico goalkeeper Jan Oblak was his team's outstanding player on the night, with one one barely credible triple stop to deny Julian Brandt and Kevin Volland [twice] especially outstanding.
"It was a very open game," Simeone said. "They had chances in the second half, there were very good saves from Oblak. He was tremendous. He is reaching his best level. And their goalkeeper [Bernd Leno] was also very good when we had chances for Correa and Koke."
Atletico have drawn fellow Spanish opposition in their last three quarterfinals, getting past Barcelona in 2014 and 2016, and falling to Real Madrid in 2015. Simeone said his focus was now solely on Sunday's La Liga game at home to Sevilla, who currently sit in third place in the table five points ahead of Atletico.
"We are just thinking about Sevilla, absolutely," he said. "We cannot get into this [about the draw], we have no influence. What will be will be."
Bayer manager Tayfun Korkut, who replaced sacked Roger Schmidt since the first leg, was pleased with his side's display in Madrid, mentioning Kevin Volland and Hernandez's first-half chances.
"From the first minute we were in this game,'' he said.
"We were trying to control it and trying to look for our situations and I think we had two good moments in the first half to score, but we were always in the game.
"The team was working hard, trying to control the game. The passing was quite good but you have to score if you want to go to the next round.''
Volland, Wendell and Kevin Kample tested Olbak in the second period but to no avail.
"In the second half we had big chances to score as well,'' Korkut added.
"At the end you have to respect what happened today but I have to tell you we are working hard, the team was working hard the last couple of days, so we will continue.
"This is the way we want them to play so we will try to continue with this style.''
Press Association contributed to this report.