Yes yes yes, it has been a busy three months of absence- but I’m here to say hello again! Funny enough, with a baby due any week now, I’d never have expected the lead into fatherhood to be as busy as it could have been. And the crazier thing is this was all just the trial run for the real thing. Still that shall be no excuse for me not to hunker down in front of the computer and type away. The page is back, and while it’ll look a little different going forward (ditching previews and reviews most likely instead for more in-depth infrequent pieces), the pen (or the keyboard) will still bleed that same shade of blue and black. Let’s get down to business!
There’s so much exciting football coming this year. Atalanta has legitimately restocked the club to properly fight both in Italy and Europe, and we’re not even done in one of the stranger European mercatos in recent memory. With the mad dash to the deserts of Saudi Arabia dominating most of the media headlines, news on the Italian mercato has been relatively tame. In fact, the biggest pieces of news, per usual, have involved the outgoing transfers to different leagues – mainly Kim Min Jae, Andre Onana, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, and until recently our very own Rasmus Hojlund.
Can we just call Tony D’Amico and Lee Congerton the flippers? Maybe that doesn’t even do it justice because polishing a piece of real estate would never net the prospector anywhere close to the 5x value Atalanta is getting for the upstart Dane. 85M euros into Atalanta’s coffers! And now judging by the signings Atalanta has made as a result, La Dea profited from a player who stylistically may not even be a true fit in black and blue. All the best to Rasmus in Manchester in the start of what will be a tremendous career, but I’ll back the new guys we’ve got coming this summer.
So let’s start with El Bilal Toure and Gianluca Scamacca. I’m not one for neck tattoos, but I’ll make an exception if its tattooed onto the body that contains a useful right boot. With his traipse across London cut short, the Roman came back to the motherland notably doing what few have done before him. Refuse the offers from ‘larger clubs.’ That’s right! Scamacca chose Atalanta, even with more prestigious clubs putting offers on the table. While Scamacca’s choice of La Dea isn’t the defining moment in Atalanta’s history, it definitely reaffirms Atalanta’s intent under Pagliuca’s ownership. The transfer fee aside, Scamacca has an opportunity to be Atalanta’s highest paid player, ever. He was earning 90k pounds per week at West Ham – and I find it highly unlikely he’ll take a 20-25% pay cut to be level on salary with Duvan and Merih Demiral. Slowly but surely Atalanta may be climbing into a new tier of financial relevance.
Which leads to Toure and his record transfer fee. Its a high-risk high-reward move to spend the cash on a forward with 16 career senior goals. Ballsy is what it is, but I like it! While beating out Everton for his services isn’t the biggest deal, Toure is just another example of a player eschewing the standard move of yesteryear to come to the friendly confines of Bergamo. Knowing very little about Toure’s game – save for a few YouTube videos – he looks to be a striker (is it truly fair to call him that?) equally focused on distribution and contribution as he is in scoring. Heck, Atalanta probably doesn’t give him the number 10 shirt if he was meant to be an all-out striker.
Scamacca falls in a similar category, but stands a little more as a classic center forward. However, both probably possess a knack to weave the offense together, and play off the vibes being set in attack by Ademola Lookman and Teun Koopmeiners. Hojlund was great at what he did, closing down inside the box, but he was often slow to contribute in the build-up. I’m looking for Atalanta to get back to its roots of properly building-up with some directness – both Toure and Scamacca should neatly fit into the set-up.
In the span of a few weeks Atalanta went from the fear of having no center forwards to having two reputable choices, but in the midfield La Dea ensured that it didn’t mess around cementing the curious middle third of the pitch. Anytime Atalanta picks off a player from the Ivan Juric school you have to like it. Especially, when its a midfielder schooled in the obligation to obsessively press until the ref blows the finals whistle. Michel Adopo may have only played 264 senior minutes for Torino last year, but the 23 year old Frenchman is in the perfect situation to supplant Marten de Roon and grow into a vice enforcer role. It could end up being the sneakiest best move of the summer, especially considering the price. Atalanta could potentially have its next double pivot member for the upcoming half decade. A lot needs to go right for that to happen, but early words from camp look to be positive.
I have a little less to say about Atalanta’s defensive replacements – because at the end of the day, La Dea’s defense feels so consistent. You want to guess how many goals Atalanta has conceded the last 5 years? 46-48-47-48-48. Defenders come and go, but Atalanta conceding upper 40s goals is a mainstay. Last year it is even crazier how Atalanta quickly regressed to the mean. Especially once considering the hot-defensive-first start, the emergence of Giorgio Scalvini, and Rafael Toloi making it through the year largely unscathed. As interesting as Sead Kolasinac and Mitchel Bakker may be, there job will be to hold fort and let the offensive replacements thrive. I do appreciate Kolasinac’s flexibility to handle duties on the wings and at centerback. Depth and flexibility was a missing piece of Atalanta’s run last year – even with a pretty lucky run of minimal injuries. Atalanta has to keep the options churning with incoming Thursday night football.
Pulling It All Together
While Atalanta’s moves have been overwhelmingly positive, after taking a step back you realize it signals something more. With so much turnover the last few seasons, the passing of the torch from the old guard to the new guard has almost been completed. With the saddening potential departure of Duvan Zapata (maybe he stays – but even then he’s not a focal point of the team’s plans), only Rafael Toloi, Berat Djimsiti, Hans Hateboer, and Marten de Roon remain from the old guard that guided Atalanta to the Serie A podium and its first season of Champion’s League football. And from that list, only Toloi and de Roon expect to feature as starters.
The old adage is that a team has a peak cycle of about three seasons before the tweak or the rebuild has to begin. Whether it be through new management or new personnel, all the best teams have to do it. Even Bayern Munich “almost” lost the Bundesliga after parting ways of Robert Lewandowski. Sometimes the best growth comes from cutting the branches that have gotten too stale. Not that Atalanta’s players have overstayed their welcome. Anything but. Rather, the team was never going to be the same once Papu Gomez left, but change is slow to initiate and then complete. Especially when Atalanta was never in a situation to truly blow everything up, because the personnel still blended good, but not, great with one another.
But now, I feel we’re finally ushering into a new era at Atalanta. An era that has third-year Teun Koopmeiners as one of the veterans of the club now (crazy how quick that can happen). An era that would probably have him as captain if Gian Piero Gasperini wasn’t stubborn in his issuance in the captain’s armband to the player with the most tenure at the club. Nonetheless hopefully this is an era still filled with thrilling football, attacking mentality, the wingback to wingback goal combo, and plenty of European football to witness on weeknights.
There’s still lots of fun to come this transfer market, and any new moves that come will just reaffirm the notion of Atalanta’s rebirth – and hopefully its next renaissance! As always, Forza Dea!
