Azzurri held to a draw at Bergamo’s Gewiss Stadium

Match closed to public - but health workers among invited guests

Roma's Lorenzo Pellegrini scored
Italy's goal in the fixture

The match between the Italy national football team and the Netherlands at the Gewiss Stadium in Bergamo on Wednesday ended in a 1-1 draw after an early goal by Roma’s Lorenzo Pellegrini was cancelled out by an equaliser from Manchester United midfielder Donny van de Beek.

Both goals came in the first half of a match for which there were no paying spectators because of the coronavirus crisis but which hundreds of health workers from the Bergamo province attended as the invited guests of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), along with the mayors of the 243 Orobic municipalities.

Before the game, a delegation from the federations of both countries laid wreaths at a cemetery in the city in tribute to the victims.

One of the stands of the stadium was covered in a huge Italy flag and, after the national anthems were played before kickoff, the players and coaching staffs of both teams turned to the main stand and applauded the health workers and mayors, who were occupying seats in a carefully-organised grid that ensured social distancing rules were observed.

The match, in the UEFA Nations League, was moved to the Bergamo venue to honour the city after it suffered the loss of thousands of citizens to Covid-19 earlier in the year, having been scheduled to be played in Milan.

Bergamo's mayor Giorgio Gori

The match was only the third senior men’s international fixture to be staged in Bergamo and the first since November 2006.  Bergamo's mayor, Giorgio Gori, described the match as a signal of the rebirth of the city.

The Gewiss Stadium has undergone improvements to meet with standards required by the Champions League, in which the Bergamo team Atalanta are playing for the second time this season.  They are part of a wider upgrade of the stadium, which was known as the Stadio Atleti Azzurri d'Italia before the sponsorship deal with the electrical components company Gewiss saw it renamed.

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

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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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