After a long and much needed break from diving deep into the inner workings of the Atalanta football machine, I will say it feels good to be back! A busy work and life tidal wave is generally never fun, but if there’s a silver lining – at least it matches up with one of the worst stretches of Atalanta football since these pages have been on the internet.
In all honesty everything that happened the last few months feels like a blur. Atalanta forgot how to score, and the depressing offense felt like the perfect gateway to disassociate with the bland football coming out of Gian Piero Gasperini’s camp. Funny how on Valentine’s Day FiveThirtyEight gave Atalanta a 58% chance to make the Champion’s League; fast forward 45 days, earning only four points out of a possible 15, and those odds drop all the way down to 31%. Oh, and Juventus is right on La Dea’s heels again, only four points back in the table.
A current 6th place standing has never felt more rickety, and there are a variety of not uncommon scenarios that can see Atalanta missing out on all types of European competition next season. Its amazing that it comes down to supporting Inter just to win the Coppa Italia to prevent Fiorentina or Cremonese from stealing a place in European play (although, I’m all on board for Cremonese bumping shoulders with the class of Europe next season!).
But for as bad as Atalanta’s recent stretch that had been, the sun has still not set in Bergamo. This partially has much to do with no team, besides Napoli, having the agency to grab the league by the horns and guarantee a position in the top four. Somehow Lazio sits 2nd at the top of division – arguably the thinnest team on paper of the seven sisters – with Inter, Milan, and Roma all faltering in nearly as dire fashion as Atalanta. La Dea are still only 3 points off Champion’s League places, and Atalanta can be tied with its Red Lombardian neighbors if Napoli keeps rolling against the Rossoneri. Of course this requires Atalanta to sew up its business against low block stalwart Cremonese.
I guess the important question from this run of misfortune is: what did we learn? Atalanta can cry, unsuccessfully, that points dropped against Lecce and Udinese were undeserved. But we’ve seen that version of Atalanta before. Drastically underperforming the expected goal metrics, with the problem being that the season is far too short for everything to regress back to normalcy. Atalanta finally started showing a pulse against Empoli – and hopefully that is the springboard everyone needed to get back to the dominate form witnessed in January.
Yet is there a lesson that we can take into the spring that is more convincing than play the best players? There were still plenty of moments when Ademola Lookman, Rasmus Hojlund, and Jeremie Boga were all on the pitch, and still nothing was clicking. Its always easy to call out Atalanta’s spastic defense that nearly blew the game against Empoli and Udinese. No team seems to give up the opportunities that Atalanta does, and there’s no team – especially for one that is supposedly ‘do or die’ offensively, that seems so sterile without attacking in the numbers. Far too often Atalanta plays like its stuck in the industrial age, while some of the best attacks have graduated to the fiberoptic age.
So ultimately it feels like a collection of problems that often manifest into one greater problem. Fortunately, everything is fixable – because we have seen Atalanta do the opposite of all its infuriating problems. Even as recently as last month. Atalanta’s comprehensive victory over Lazio, in Rome, may have been the squad’s best victory in recent memory. And the squad did everything we want to see: an optimal starting XI, defensive security at the back, calculated pressing that led to offense in numbers, and speed that very few defenses in Italy can contend with.
Even though Hojlund did not score on his blistering run that has been GIFed over and over again, it demonstrated what Atalanta can be offensively, and how it had been a shell of itself ever since that memorable victory. Attacking with assertion and defending with caution, plus the return of Teun Koopmeiner’s wizardry in the middle can still make this a successful season. Three extremely winnable (but not easy) matches against Cremonese, Bologna, and Fiorentina set up Atalanta’s important clash against Roma on a Monday night. Champion’s League stakes will be made that night, and Atalanta will hopefully be ready to prove if last season was the anomaly or a newer version of the status quo.
There’s still a lot of football over the next three weeks to make season defining decisions, so let’s keep taking one game at a time, make our own luck, and quit playing both the physical and mental (self) opponent all at once. Lot’s of good still to come this season, let’s get it! As always, Forza Dea!
