Fernando Torres is backing Atletico Madrid to lift the Champions League trophy in Milan after Antoine Griezmann's crucial away goal fired them into the final on May 28.
Atletico reached their second Champions League final in three years, despite losing 2-1 at Bayern Munich on Tuesday in the semi-final return leg as it finished 2-2 on aggregate.
After Atletico had beaten Bayern 1-0 in Madrid, Griezmann's crucial away goal in Munich means Diego Simeone's Atletico will face either Real Madrid or Manchester City in the final.
“We’re delighted,” said Griezmann.
“It was difficult, a really hard game. We had a great opponent in front of us and we had to both defend and try to score. That’s what we did.
“They were better, but we scored an away goal, which was important.”
• Read more: Richard Jolly – Atletico Madrid, with so much achieved under Diego Simeone, close in on greatest triumph
• Also see: Atletico end Pep Guardiola's Champions League dreams with Bayern – in pictures
Atletico, level on points with Barcelona at the top of La Liga with two games of the campaign left, face a busy few weeks.
“We need to keep grounded and first of all think in La Liga before the final,” added Griezmann.
Bayern and coach Pep Guardiola will rue Thomas Muller’s saved first-half penalty just after Xabi Alonso had given the hosts the lead by crashing home a first-half free-kick.
There was similar drama in the second half when Manuel Neuer saved Torres’ late penalty attempt for Atletico.
“We want to win the tournament,” said the 32-year-old Torres, who won the 2012 Champions League title while at Chelsea.
“We have the chance to create history and the opponent is irrelevant.
“We’ve beaten the champions of Holland, Spain and now Germany (PSV Eindhoven, Barcelona and Bayern) to get the final.
“It was very intense and I’m so proud of this team.
“It’s fully deserved and we’re closer to our dream.
“When you play against a side like Bayern, you can’t play the game you want.
“They created a lot of chances and put us under a lot of pressure.
“In the second half, we did things differently, pressed them high, counter attack and we got the goal.
“The most important thing is we’re in the final.”
Simeone said he was stunned by his side’s ability to cope with the stress in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of Munich’s Allianz Arena.
“I really have to say we played against the best team I have faced in my whole career, it was unbelievable how they played,” said Simeone.
“It was great to see my team play with such intensity.
“When Bayern missed their penalty, we had a good chat in the half-time break and we coped with the pressure they put on us in the second half.
“We achieved our goal, we have seen that we are a very strong team, but we were really good defensively.”
Simeone also singled out Atletico goalkeeper Jan Oblak and Neuer for their saves to deny Muller and Torres respectively.
“They were two great saves by the goalies, I have to say how difficult it is to cope with this situation at Bayern, playing away from home. It’s unbelievable what we have achieved,” said Simeone.
“Now we have beaten three of the strongest teams in Europe.”
Having lost 4-1 to Real Madrid in the 2014 Champions League final, Atletico will now bid for their first European crown at the third attempt having also lost the 1974 final – to Bayern.
“This is another chance for us to win the Champions league final. We have 15 days to prepare and whoever gets through to the final will be just as prepared,” replied Simeone when asked if he would prefer to play Real or City in the final.
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It’s easier to go grey from a lighter colour, so you may want to do that first. And this is the time to try a shorter style, she advises. Then a stylist can introduce highlights, start lightening up the roots, and let it fade out. Once it’s entirely grey, a purple shampoo will prevent yellowing.
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Points tally
1. Australia 52; 2. New Zealand 44; 3. South Africa 36; 4. Sri Lanka 35; 5. UAE 27; 6. India 27; 7. England 26; 8. Singapore 8; 9. Malaysia 3
KEY DATES IN AMAZON'S HISTORY
July 5, 1994: Jeff Bezos founds Cadabra Inc, which would later be renamed to Amazon.com, because his lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver'. In its earliest days, the bookstore operated out of a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington
July 16, 1995: Amazon formally opens as an online bookseller. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought becomes the first item sold on Amazon
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1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs
2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website
2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006
2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black
2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year
2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video
2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started
2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products
2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013
2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS
2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa
2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition
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Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
