{"id":10064,"date":"2024-09-18T20:40:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T19:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10064"},"modified":"2024-09-20T10:58:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T09:58:40","slug":"the-young-master-and-the-old-apprentice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10064","title":{"rendered":"The Young Master and the Old Apprentice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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And so to Alpine Lombardy, where a new opponent and a new Champions League format await.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the rewards of CL qualification is meant to be not having to play Thursday night football. However, we shall be playing football on Thursday night in hilly and historic Bergamo where Atalanta hosts us in its newly refurbished Gewiss Stadium for the first of our eight CL league phase games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It does not look like it from the glitzy new wraparounds at either end, but the stadium dates to 1928. Then known as the Brumana, it was tiny, holding just 12,000 spectators. Today, following a three-phase expansion started just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, it holds shy of 25,000. However, the pitch has remained 110m x 70m \u2014 barely larger than the 105m x 68m minimum specified by CL rules. Last weekend’s Serie A game against Fiorentina was Atalanta’s first home game with the renovation complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The club dates to 1907. It was founded by pupils of the city’s Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi, an elite and demanding high school famed for grooming the future ruling class through a classical education. The scholars named their football team for the mythical Greek heroine, Atalanta, ‘whom no man could outrun except by cheating’. Always good to see a classical education not going to waste. The club’s crest depicts Atalanta’s profile to this day. It bears a striking resemblance to the logo of the German hair products company Wella. But I digress\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After merging with Bergamo’s other football club in 1920 and adopting its blue and back colours, the Nerazzuri were admitted to the predecessor of Serie B. They have yo-yoed between the top two tiers of Italian football, earning the unusual distinction of holding the record for promotions to Serie A. They are now in their 14th consecutive season in the top flight, their longest continuous stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atalanta qualified for this season’s CL by finishing fourth in Serie A, with the backup of winning last season’s Europa League, beating the otherwise invincible Bayer Leverkusen in the final and the Scousers along the way. They are no mugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gasperini<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the club’s first European trophy and 66-year-old manager Gian Piero Gasperini’s first of any kind in a career dating back to 1994. Atalanta is his seventh club, but he has bloomed there into the most underrated coach in Europe. Since taking over in 2016, he has transformed Atalanta from regular relegation candidates into a club consistently challenging for Serie A’s European places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gasperini plays highly-fluid and high-risk football. He once said, ‘If you don’t win without danger, there’s no glory to your triumph’. Drawing his inspiration from the Dutch sides of his youth rather than the defensive-minded Italian ones, he favours setting up in a 3-4-2-1. Yet that is a mere starting point. Jose Mourinho once moaned that Gasperini was the most difficult coach he faced because Atalanta changed its formation so often in a game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The uniqueness of Gasperini’s philosophy is his mix of high-intensity offensive and defensive pressing, relentless, persistent one-to-one marking and lots of quick, short passes and overloads to progress down both wings. Atalanta largely abandons the middle of the pitch. Both wing-backs play high and wide, as do two midfielders and the defensive line, with the centre-backs also ready to carry the ball into the half-spaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fluidity lets Atalanta flood the box with players who get off lots of shots. They averaged 14 a game last season, the fourth highest in Serie A with more than five on target, second best in the league. Atalanta scores a lot \u2014 72 goals last season, bettered only by champions Inter and runners-up Milan \u2014 but it also means they are vulnerable to opponents making hay in the space behind. Inter ripped them to shreds in a 4-0 pasting before the interlull. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without the ball, Atalanta falls back into a compact 5-4-1, marks man-to-man and squeezes the already small pitch. Gasperini employs an unusual counter-pressing system that pushes attackers further and further away from the Atalanta goal one by one. If it holds (if a defensive system that essentially has no structure can be said to hold), it is highly effective; if the opposition breaks it, there is space aplenty to counter-attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuttering start<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This season has seen a stuttering start to Atalanta\u2019s league campaign, with two wins and two losses in the first four games. At the weekend, it twice came from behind to beat Fiorentina 3-2, not a good omen as home wins over the Tuscan side have a habit of triggering unbeaten streaks for Atalanta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against us, Marco Carnesecchi will likely be between the sticks. He played up through Italy’s national youth teams, but he is now 24 and has yet to get a senior cap. He replaced last season’s No. 1, Juan Musso, who was sold to Atletico Madrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of him, the back three will likely comprise the lanky Swedish international centre-back Isak Hien, Swiss-born Albanian international Berat Djimsiti and in the absence of injured skipper Rafael Toloi, Sead Kolasinac, formerly of this parish. However, the veteran DM, Marten de Roon, who has been pressed into emergency service in the back three of late to cover a raft of injuries to the club’s centre-backs, may stay there if Gasperini doesn’t relish the prospect of his mane of white hair being turned a further whiter shade of pale by the prospect of footraces between Kolasinac and the likes of Saka, Martinelli and Sterling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If de Roon does not move back to his more accustomed midfield role, Mario Pasalic, the ex-Chelsea man who had more loans (six) than games for Chelsea (none), and \u00c9derson, who is on the fringes of the Brazil squad, will provide the hustle and bustle needed by Gasperini’s midfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dutch international Teun Koopmeiners delivered that last season when he was also Atalanta’s joint-top scorer in Serie A. However, he was sold to Juventus for \u20ac54.7 million in the summer. Like Brighton, Atalanta tends to buy young and well and has a noted Academy but regularly loses its stars to the big-spending clubs. Rasmus H\u00f8jlund was the money-spinning sale of the previous season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matteo Ruggeri, the tall Italy Under-21 left-back bought from Torino in the summer, and Raoul Bellanova, who won his first Italy cap earlier this year, will provide the width, progression and energy Gasperini demands from his wing-backs. Ruggeri is equally capable of playing in the back three, in which case the veteran former Italian international Davide Zappacosta would come in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gasperini\u2019s preferred attacking midfield starters are the 23-year-old Belgian international Charles De Ketelaere, who turned last season’s loan from AC Milan into a permanent \u20ac22 million move in the summer, and Ademola Lookman, the London-born Nigerian international who will be familiar from his days with Charlton, Everton, Fulham and Leicester City. Gasperini has revitalised two men whose careers were going sideways before arriving at Atalanta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marco Brescianini, the Argentine-born centre forward picked up from Serie B’s Frosinone and who won his first Italy caps in the interlull, Lazar Samard\u017ei\u0107, a German-born Serbian international and Nicol\u00f2 Zaniolo, who is on loan from Galatasaray, which lent him to Aston Villa last season, are options from the bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In-form Mateo Retegui will be up top. The Argentina-born Italy international, who joined from Genoa in the summer, has four goals in four games, three with his head. He is filling in for last season’s top-scorer, Gianluca Scamacca, a prospect with whom we were once linked but who ended up at Moyes’s West Ham, where he didn’t take. He was rebuilding not only his club but also his international career before doing his ACL. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Everton centre-back Ben Godfrey will also be absent due to injury. Other superannuated Premier League players in Atalanta’s squad include former Wolves keeper Rui Patricio, who arrived in the summer from Roma, and Juan Cuadrado, once of Chelsea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arsenal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arteta will want a winning start to the CL league phase. He rarely makes wholesale changes in team selection and I suspect he will only tweak in order to execute a specific game plan for this opponent. I write before knowing the latest injury news, but the word is that Saka is available but Big Gabi is not. Thus: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White \u2014 Saliba \u2014 Calafiori \u2014Timber<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partey \u2014 Rice \u2014 Havertz<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka \u2014 Jesus \u2014 Sterling<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Sterling gets on, it would make him the first player to feature in the Champions League with four different English sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will be a challenging and unusual game, turning on who wins the tactical battle between our young master and their old apprentice, so to speak. A 2-0 win would be a good evening’s sorcery for Artera, especially if he can rest legs early ahead of Sunday’s trip to Manchester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game ‘holics, near and far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so to Alpine Lombardy, where a new opponent and a new Champions League format await. One of the rewards of CL qualification is meant to be not having to play Thursday night football. However, we shall be playing football on Thursday night in hilly and historic Bergamo where Atalanta hosts us in its newly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10064"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10064"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10071,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10064\/revisions\/10071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}