Glory night for Atalanta

La Dea put Bergamo on football map

Fans of Atalanta celebrated victory in Piazza 
Vittorio Veneto in the centre of the Città Bassa

Bergamo’s football club Atalanta made history last night by winning the first European trophy in their 116-year history.

They beat hot favourites Bayer Leverkusen - the newly-crowned Bundesliga champions - in emphatic style to become Europa League champions, winning 3-0 in the final at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland.

It was the German team’s first defeat in 52 matches, ending an unbeaten run that began in May, 2023 and was the longest by a top-level team in European football history.

Although Atalanta - known by their nickname La Dea (the Goddess) - have played in Serie A - the top division of Italian football - for much of their history, their only trophy success before last night was winning the Coppa Italia in 1963.

Their hero in Dublin was their 26-year-old English-born winger Ademola Lookman, who scored all three goals, two in the first half and a third with 15 minutes remaining in the second half, which killed off any hope of a comeback by Leverkusen.

Lookman is embraced by a member of
Atalanta's coaching staff at the final whistle

As well as those who travelled to Dublin to support the nerazzurri, thousands more gathered in the centre of Bergamo, where the match was shown on giant TV screens and celebrations continued long into the night.

Ademola, who joined Atalanta from a German team, RB Leipzig, in 2022, is enjoying the most successful period of his career, having started out as a teenager with the English team Charlton Athletic.

This season has seen him score 15 goals for Atalanta, as well as three in the Africa Cup of Nations, where his team, Nigeria - his parents' homeland - reached the semi-finals.

Italian journalists joked with the London-born player that he might see a street named after him in Bergamo to recognise his achievement and Lookman spoke of his affection for the place he has made his home for the last two years.

"I feel the support from the fans from the first minute I was in Bergamo," he said. "The city of Bergamo gives me a sense of calmness. It's a very calm, relaxed city and that has helped me a lot with my living style.”

Atalanta achieved notable wins over Liverpool and Olympique Marseille in reaching the final. 

Gian Piero Gasperini has been
with Atalanta since 2016

The victory is also a vindication of the club’s faith in their head coach. Gian Piero Gasperini, who hails from just outside Turin, has been in charge since 2016. This is his first trophy too.

Italian coaches rarely stay in post for more than a couple of seasons but under Gasperini Atalanta have reached the Coppa Italia final three times and played in European competitions in six of the last seven seasons, including three in the UEFA Champions League.

Winning the Europa League earns them a place in next season’s Champions League and, with two matches remaining, they could still finish as high as third in Serie A.

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Bergamo’s Atalanta reach first European final

La Dea make history with win over Marseille

Bergamo’s top football team, Atalanta, achieved a piece of club history at the Gewiss Stadium on Thursday evening (May 9) when a comfortable win over the French team Olympique Marseille secured their first appearance in a European final.

La Dea beat Marseille 3-0 in the second leg for a 4-1 aggregate victory in the semi-final of the Europa League competition.

A crowd of around 15,000 in the Gewiss Stadium, which can be found near the centre of the Città Bassa, in the Borgo Santa Caterina area, watched the match, with the capacity currently reduced because of redevelopment.

They saw the English-born Nigerian international winger Ademola Lookman score Atalanta’s opening goal in the first half, before Matteo Ruggeri, the locally-born Italian Under-21 defender, and the Mali forward El Bilal Toure added further goals in the second half.

Gian Piero Gasperini
is Atalanta's manager

Atalanta will meet the German team Bayer Leverkusen in the final at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on May 22.  It promises to be a tough task for La Dea: Leverkusen, already crowned Bundesliga champions, are unbeaten in 49 matches in all competitions.

Managed by Gian Piero Gasperini, who has been in charge since 2016, the closest Atalanta have previously been to a European final was in 1988, when, as a second-division side, they made it to the semi-finals of the now-defunct European Cup-Winners’ Cup.

Securing their place in the Europa League final continues a run of success under Gasperini that has seen the team qualify for the UEFA Champions League three times, reaching the quarter-finals in 2020, as well as finishing runners-up in the Coppa Italia twice.

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Goggia 'fairy tale' almost realised at Winter Olympics

Sofia Goggia became an
Olympic champion in 2018

The Bergamo skier Sofia Goggia narrowly failed in her bid to defend her downhill title at the Winter Olympics in Beijing on Tuesday - but was delighted with her performance nonetheless after fearing she would not be able to take part in the Games in China.

Goggia, who became an Olympic champion for the first time when she took the women's downhill gold at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, suffered damaged anterior cruciate ligaments in her left knee and fractured her fibula in a World Cup race at Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy last month.

"I'm a little sorry about (not winning) the gold medal, but I could not do more than this,” she told reporters after taking the silver medal, her time just 16 hundredths of a second behind Switzerland's Corinne Suter.

"I'm really happy with the way I skied,” she added. “It's a fairy tale that I managed to make real because, after the injury at Cortina, it seemed like a dream that had gone up in smoke.

"I thank the doctors who told me that, if I really believed, I could do it and took the responsibility of letting me race.”

Michela Moiola receives an honour from Italy
president Sergio Mattarella after her 2018 win

The 29-year-old Goggia races with an outline of the Bergamo skyline on the back of her helmet, which she dedicated to the 6,000 citizens of Bergamo province who have lost their lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.

They included the grandmother of her friend and Italy teammate, 26-year-old Michela Moioli, who comes from Alzano Lombardo, just outside Bergamo.

Moioli, who was the women’s snowboard cross champion at the Pyeongchang Games, replaced Goggia as Italy’s flag bearer at the opening ceremony in Beijing.

Unfortunately, her title defence also ended in disappointment when she was eliminated at the semi-final stage of the snowboard cross event.

(Portrait photo of Sofia Goggia by Vale93b via Wikipedia Commons)

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More heartbreak for Atalanta

Bergamo's team runners-up again in Coppa Italia

Ruslan Malinovskyi scored the
Atalanta goal in a 2-1 defeat

Atalanta will have to wait a little longer for their revival to bring them a trophy after a second appearance in three years in the Coppa Italia final ended in defeat.

La Dea were beaten 2-1 by Juventus in Wednesday’s final at the Mapei Stadium in Reggio-Emilia, which is the shared home of the Sassuolo and Reggiana clubs.

Gian Piero Gasperini’s team were hoping to win the Bergamo club’s first trophy since 1963, having lost the final to Lazio two years ago.

They were watched by 4,300 spectators, the most allowed to attend a match since the Covid lockdown began in March 2020.

Juventus went ahead through Dejan Kulusevski in the 31st minute but Atalanta equalised before half-time thanks to a powerful shot by Ruslan Malinovskyi, their Ukrainian midfielder.

However, the bianconeri stepped up their intensity in the second half and ran out deserved winners after Federico Chiesa scored their second goal 17 minutes from the end.

It was a 14th Coppa Italia victory for Juventus and a first success for head coach Andrea Pirlo, one of Italy’s finest players of recent years, who is in his first season as a coach.

Gasperini insisted that, despite the disappointment, his team could leave the stadium with heads held high and will now focus on clinching second place in Serie A - the highest finish in the club’s history - by beating AC Milan at the Gewiss Stadium in Bergamo on Sunday.

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Bergamo hosts the Azzurri

Mancini's team take on the Netherlands

The new North End of the Atalanta ground,
now known as the Gewiss Stadium

The Gewiss Stadium, home of Bergamo’s Serie A club Atalanta, will on Wednesday evening host the Italy national team for the first time in 14 years. 

The match between Italy and the Netherlands in the UEFA Nations League has been switched from Milan's Giuseppe Meazza stadium, which was its original scheduled venue, to honour the city after it bore the brunt of the wave of coronavirus that hit Italy earlier this year.

The right to host the match, which will be played without spectators, is a source of pride and satisfaction for Bergamo, which will host the Azzurri for the third time in the city’s history.

The last time was in November 2006 when the Italy squad then coached by Roberto Donadoni, took on Turkey in a friendly, which ended in a 1-1 draw.

The first time Bergamo staged a senior international match was in January 1987, when the team coached by Azeglio Vicini faced Malta in a European championships qualifier, winning 5-0.

Roberto Mancini is the current
coach of the Italy national team

"The Azzurri, who will be in Bergamo from 12 October onwards, will pay homage to the city, while adhering to all the necessary sanitary protocols," a spokesman for the FIGC - Italy’s football federation - said.

The Italy team, coached by Roberto Mancini, are the current leaders in  Group 1A of the Nations League, with a win and two draws from their three matches so far. The Netherlands are in second place with four points. When the teams met in Amsterdam in September, the Azzurri won with a goal from Nicolò Barella, of Inter-Milan.

The city of Bergamo and its wider province lost thousands of citizens, perhaps as many as 6,000 according to some estimates, after the pandemic peaked in northern Italy during spring and early summer. Almost half of the 35,000 casualties reported across Italy since the virus was identified occurred in the Lombardy region, of which Bergamo is the fourth largest city.

The Stadio Atleti Azzurri d'Italia, as it was known before the sponsorship deal with the electrical components company Gewiss, is currently undergoing a programme of renovation, costing €40 million, that will increase capacity to 24,000 from the current 21,300.

The stadium is in the Borgo Santa Caterina district of Bergamo's Città Bassa, in Viale Giulio Cesare.

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Atalanta reach final of Coppa Italia

Victory over Fiorentina clinches trip to Rome

Alejandro 'Papu' Gomez scored the winning
goal for Atalanta in last night's match

Bergamo’s football team, Atalanta, will attempt to win a major title for only the second time in the club’s history when they face the Rome team Lazio in the final of the Coppa Italia next month.

The nerazzurri came from a goal behind to beat Fiorentina 2-1 in the home second leg of the semi-final last night for a 5-4 aggregate victory.

Atalanta have not won a major trophy since lifting the Coppa Italia in 1963 but this was their second semi-final in two years in what is becoming an outstanding season under coach Gian Piero Gasparini.

The team came from behind to win at second-placed Napoli in Serie A on Monday to move level on points with fourth-placed AC Milan in the fight for the last Champions League spot. The nerazzurri have never previously qualified for the Champions League.

Last night, knowing they had to score at least after a 3-3 first-leg result in Florence gave Atalanta a potential advantage on the away-goals-count-double rule in the event of another draw, Fiorentina went ahead after just three minutes, when Luis Muriel’s shot beat Atalanta goalkeeper Pierluigi Gollini after a good pass by Federico Chiesa.

Gian Piero Gasparini has been in charge
of the Atalanta team since 2016

But Atalanta, who had knocked out holders Juventus in the quarter-finals, were level less than 10 minutes later.

A foolish challenge from Fiorentina defender Federico Ceccherini on Alejandro 'Papu' Gomez gave them a penalty, which former Fiorentina forward Josip Ilicic converted.

Argentina-born forward Gomez scored the winner in the 69th minute when Fiorentina goalkeeper Alban Lafont could not prevent a shot by the Atalanta captain going into the net, despite getting both hands to it. 

In the May 15 final, Atalanta will face Lazio at the Roman club’s ground, the Stadio Olimpico. Lazio eliminated AC Milan on Wednesday.

Atalanta play their home matches at the Stadio Atleti Azzurri d'Italia in Via Giulio Cesare in the Città Bassa, which they share with another Bergamo club, Albinoleffe, who currently play in Serie C, the third tier of Italian professional football.

Coach Gasparini, who represented Palermo and Pescara among other clubs in a 17-year playing career, has been on Atalanta’s bench since June 2016.

Read also:

Hail the brilliant new Atalanta!

Atalanta promoted to Serie A

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Hail the brilliant new Atalanta!

By Jeremy Culley

'His Majesty' Wayne Rooney

‘His Majesty Wayne Rooney had to run into the Nerazzure mouths of a hungry goddess, who makes a morsel of the soft Toffees of Liverpool’ was the triumphant declaration from the iconic Italian daily Gazzetta dello Sport.

English audiences unsure what to expect as Everton travelled to Italy last night will be under no illusions now, after Rooney and co were so convincingly thumped.

This was the final stage of the rebirth of Atalanta, the Bergamo club making their first foray into European competition since 1991.

The club will be familiar to British fans hooked by Football Italia on Channel 4 in the 90s and noughties, but few would associate it with anything remotely resembling success.

They have perennially been little more than fodder to be brushed aside by the likes of Juventus, Roma, AC Milan and Internazionale.

So this renaissance of ‘La Dea’, or ‘the Goddess’, a nickname stemming from the club being named after the Greek huntress, has something almost mythological about it.

Not least on Thursday as their fans had to traipse 120 miles south to Reggio Emilia to take in the historic occasion, while the ageing Stadio Atleti d’Azzurri Italia in Bergamo is refurbished to meet UEFA regulations.

Being forced into unfamiliar surroundings would surely be a leveller for Everton to seize upon against the Italian upstarts?

Never.

The thousands who travelled turned the temporary home into a cauldron, Atalanta’s fans oozing the optimism and confidence generated last season when the Bergamaschi defied expectations by finishing fourth in Serie A to qualify for the Europa League.

They symbolically finished ahead of both neighbouring Milanese giants, so often having watched their illustrious rivals Inter and Milan hog the limelight.

In 1991, appropriately enough it was Inter who defeated Atalanta 2-0 at the UEFA Cup’s quarter-final stage, sentencing them to a quarter of a century in the European footballing wilderness.

Gian Piero Gasperini, the head
coach of Atalanta

How sweet the Peroni must have tasted in the bars of the Città Alta last night, and back in May when Atalanta finished nine points ahead of Milan and 10 clear of Inter.

Everton were dreadful, their manager Ronald Koeman withering of his players’ efforts, yet their colossal £130m summer spending spree, notwithstanding the free transfer of Rooney, dwarfs the modest outlay spent on the Atalanta revolution.

Andrea Petagna, the pacy scourge of Everton last night, was plucked from AC Milan at a bargain price after spells on loan in Serie B.

Marten de Roon, a £12m Middlesbrough buy ahead of last year’s Premier League season, flopped on Teesside and returned to Bergamo.

And Andreas Cornelius, Cardiff City’s record £7.5m buy in their maiden season in the top flight, was a disaster of such epic proportions in south Wales he left after just six months.

All three, especially the wonderful, electric Petagna, are now integral to Gian Piero Gasperini’s side, which continues to confound doubters.

Gasperini himself, a journeyman manager now at 59, has a somewhat chequered record.

Marten de Roon was a flop in England
with Middlesbrough

Success with Crotone and Genoa earned him the opportunity to revive the fortunes of Atalanta’s neighbours Inter.

He took the helm just over a year on from José Mourinho’s Champions League triumph in 2010, after which a poor period under Rafa Benitez had led to a decline in fortunes.

Gasperini fared disastrously in trying to arrest the slide and was sacked after just five matches in charge, losing four of them.

Rather aptly, the Italian media routinely referred to him as ‘Gasp’ in headlines, such was the panic that seemed to be engulfing San Siro.

It left Gasperini with a career to resurrect, his stock having taken a pounding, and the recent success of Atalanta is as much a story of his revival as it is the club’s. 

The giants of Inter, Roma and Napoli departed Bergamo empty-handed last season as Atalanta surged to six straight wins in October and November.

All season, defeats were rare, with AC Milan and Juventus also unable to claim victory at the intimidating Atleti d’Azzurri.

The Argentine winger Alejandro Gomez, another astute purchase, from the Ukrainians Metalist Kharkiv, was the star, bagging 16 goals and earning a maiden cap for his country in the process.

Much-needed improvements to Atalanta’s home ground are now on the agenda, after the club bought the stadium – still quite a rarity in Italy – from the local council.

Andrea Petagna was
the scourge of Everton

Such upbeat signs are a far cry from seven years ago.

As Inter celebrated Champions League glory, their neighbours in Bergamo were relegated to Serie B, suffering two heavy defeats to their rivals at San Siro before Napoli nailed the coffin lid shut with a 2-0 win on the penultimate weekend.

It was a third relegation in seven years, with real fears voiced for the club’s future, both financially and on the pitch.

But an immediate promotion and successive seasons of survival have shored up the club, with Atalanta heavy reliant on bargain buys and academy graduates to be competitive.

The superb Petagna might not strictly be an Atalanta product but it is they who have catapulted him into the limelight.

He follows an illustrious line of players to have blossomed in Bergamo, with Filippo Inzaghi, Christian Vieri, Paolo Montero and Roberto Donadoni among a star-studded list.

The sale of these stars has always been a necessary evil to keep the club afloat.

Such prudence explains why the Bergamaschi have endured such a long wait for silverware; the 1963 Coppa Italia triumph remains Atalanta’s solitary major trophy.

But perhaps now – possibly even through the Europa League – the wait for a trophy may end.

Certainly the only ‘gasps’ from watching pundits now are in admiration for the job Gian Piero is doing in Bergamo.

‘The Toffees of Liverpool’ are merely one of many teams to come unstuck against the new, brilliant Atalanta.

See Best of Bergamo’s updated Flights Guide

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