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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Matteo stars again for the Azzurri

Pessina goal puts Italy in quarter-finals

Atalanta's Matteo Pessina scored Italy's crucial
second goal in the 2-1 win over Austria

Italy learned tonight that they will face Belgium in the quarter-finals of Euro 2020, the major European international football competition delayed by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Atalanta fans will be adamant that their hero Matteo Pessina must keep his place in Roberto Mancini’s team after the midfielder with the Bergamo squad came off the bench to score what proved to be the winning goal in the Azzurri’s 2-1 victory over Austria in London on Saturday night.

Pessina was one of five substitutes used by Mancini as Italy struggled to get the better of Austria despite starting the round-of-16 match as strong favourites.

The scores were level at 0-0 after 90 minutes, so 30 minutes of extra time was played and the Azzurri proved to have the stamina and quality to prevail.

Another of the substitutes, Fiorentina’s Federico Chiesa, finally gave Italy the lead five minutes into extra time, before Messina coolly stroked home the second goal from close range to double the Azzurri advantage.

It was the 24-year-old player’s second goal of the tournament after scoring the only goal of Italy’s final group game, a victory over Wales.

Joakim Maehle scored for 
Denmark against Wales

And it proved to be vital too as Austria’s Sasa Kalajdzic pulled one back for the underdogs in the match at Wembley Stadium before Italy held on to their advantage.

Kaladzic’s goal was the first to be conceded by Mancini’s team in 12 matches. They are now unbeaten in 31 matches, the longest such run in the history of the national team.

Italy meet Belgium on Friday at the Allianz Arena, the home of German club Bayern Munich, with a kick-off at 8pm UK time, 9pm in Italy.

Belgium beat defending champions Portugal 1-0 in Seville on Sunday to progress to the last eight and the clash with Italy will be one of the most eagerly-anticipated matches so far at Euro 2020.

One of Pessina’s Atalanta team-mates, wing-back Joakim Maehle, was among the goalscorers as Denmark beat Wales 4-0 on Saturday to book their place in the quarter-finals.

The Danes will take on the Czech Republic, surprise winners against the Netherlands, next Saturday evening.

Monza-born Pessina is the first Atalanta player to start a match for the Azzurri in the final tournament of any of the European championships in which they have played, and the first representative of the Bergamo team to score for Italy in any major tournament.

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Atalanta star is Italy’s hero

Pessina goal sees the Azzurri top Euros group

Matteo Pessina has become a star
of Bergamo's Atalanta team

Atalanta’s Matteo Pessina was Italy’s hero as the national team beat Wales in Rome yesterday to progress to the knock-out stage of the delayed Euro 2020 competition as winners of their group.

The 24-year-old midfielder scored the only goal of the match in the 39th minute, maintaining the Azzurri’s 100 per cent success record in Group A, in which they earlier beat Turkey and Switzerland. They have yet to concede a goal in the competition.

The Monza-born player, who was added to Roberto Mancini’s squad only as a late replacement for the injured Stefano Sensi, became the youngest Italy player to score on his debut in a major tournament and made history in two other ways.

He is the first Atalanta player to start a match for the Azzurri in the final tournament of any of the European championships in which they have played and the first representative of the Bergamo team to score for Italy in any major tournament.

In fact, it is 19 years since La Dea had a player selected to represent Italy in a major tournament, the last one being the attacking midfielder Cristiano Doni, who went to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea as part of Giovanni Trapattoni’s squad and started two matches.

Pessina and defender Rafael Tolói, who was also a starter against Wales, are only the sixth and seventh Atalanta players to be named in Italy squads for major tournaments in its history and only the third and fourth to actually wear the Azzurri shirt in action.

Both played key roles in helping La Dea finish third in Serie A in the season just ended. Pessina, who joined Atalanta from AC Milan in 2017 and spent two of his first two seasons with the nerazzurri out on loan, first with La Spezia and then Hellas Verona, was a regular in Gian Piero Gasperini’s team in 2020-21, scoring four goals. 

The German wing back Robin Gosens has
become one of Atalanta's top players

Gasperini's team has a number of its stars play a prominent roles in the current Euros. Robin Gosens, the German-born wing back who has been with the Bergamo team since 2017 and has been one of Atalanta's best players over the last two seasons, scored for Germany in their 4-2 win over Portugal on Saturday, while striker Aleksey Miranchuk scored Russia's only goal in their win over Finland last week.

Other members of Gasperini's multi-national squad to see action in the Euros so far are Joakim Maehle (Denmark), Remo Freuler (Switzerland), Marten de Roon (Netherlands), Ruslan Malinovsky (Ukraine) and Mario Pasalic (Croatia).

After playing for his country at Under-20 and Under-21 level, Pessina made his debut for Italy’s senior team on November 11, 2020, featuring as a substitute in a 4–0 friendly win against Estonia in Florence. He scored his first goals for the Azzurri in a home friendly against San Marino in May, 2021, netting twice in a 7-0 victory.

As winners of Group A, Italy will play the runners-up in Group C in the round of 16 on Saturday, which looks likely to be either Ukraine or Austria, who were scheduled to meet each other in Bucharest this afternoon.

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Atalanta duo make history

Tolói and Pessina in Roberto Mancini's squad for Euros

Atalanta players Rafael Tolói and Matteo Pessina have made history with their selection for the Italy squad for the delayed 2020 European football championships, which opens on Friday with the Azzurri facing Turkey at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.

Defender Tolói and midfielder Pessina are the first players from the Bergamo team to be named as part of the Italy squad in any of the 10 European championships in which the national team has participated since the tournament was launched in 1968.

Brazilian-born Rafael Tolói qualified
to play for Italy earlier this year

Their selection is a reflection of Atalanta’s improved standing within the Italian game, in which they have become a prominent club under the coaching of Gian Piero Gasperini.

With Gasperini in charge, they have finished third in Serie A for three seasons in a row as well as reaching the Coppa Italia final twice.

Tolói, who can play as a centre back or a full back and is La Dea’s club captain, was born in Brazil and represented his country of birth at Under-20 level.

But he has played in Italy since 2014 and qualified for an Italian passport earlier this year after more than five years of residency, after which Azzurri manager Roberto Mancini called him up in March, giving him his debut aged 30 in the World Cup qualifying match against Lithuania on March 31.

He made a total of 42 appearances for Atalanta in the season just ended, scoring two goals.

La Dea signed him from Sao Paulo of Brazil in 2015 for €3.5 million in 2015 after he spent half of the previous season on loan with Roma.

Midfielder Pessina, aged 24 and born just 40km (25 miles) from Bergamo in Monza, north of Milan, joined Atalanta from AC Milan in 2017 and spent two of his first two seasons with the nerazzurri out on loan, first with La Spezia and then Hellas Verona.

Matteo Pessina replaces the
injured Stefano Sensi 

He became a regular for La Dea in the season just ended, making 39 appearances.

After playing for his country at Under-20 and Under-21 level, Pessina made his debut for Italy’s senior team on November 11, 2020, featuring as a substitute in a 4–0 friendly win against Estonia in Florence. He scored his first goals for the Azzurri in a home friendly against San Marino in May, 2021, netting twice in a 7-0 victory. 

Named in Mancini’s preliminary squad for Euro 2020, he was initially left out of the final 26-man selection but reinstated after an injury to Inter Milan’s Stefano Sensi.

The tournament, postponed last summer because of Covid-19, is being played in 11 different countries in a major change from the usual format, which traditionally has seen all the games staged in one or sometimes two host nations.

Drawn with Switzerland and Wales as well as Turkey, Italy will play all their group matches in Rome, which will also host one of the quarter-finals.

Both semi-finals and the July 11 final are being staged at Wembley Stadium in London.

Bookmakers in England think that France and England are the favourites to win the competition, with Italy tipped to reach the quarter-finals, perhaps the semi-finals.

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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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Atalanta close in on second place in Serie A table

Atalanta's fortunes have been
transformed under Gasperini

Bergamo’s high-flying football team, Atalanta, need to pick up just one more win from their last two Serie A matches to qualify for the Champions League for the third consecutive season.

Atalanta - whose nicknames include i Nerazzurri (the black and blues) and La Dea (the Goddess) - consolidated their hold on second place in the table with a 2-0 win over struggling Benevento at the Gewiss Stadium on Wednesday.

Their goals came from top scorer Luis Muriel and Mario Pasalic.

Their final two matches are away to Genoa on Saturday before they take on AC Milan in the final game of the season, again at the Gewiss Stadium in the Città Bassa.  The title is already won by Inter-Milan.

In the middle, they have the small matter of the Coppa Italia final against Juventus to think about after another exceptional season. Were they to finish second, it would be the highest final place in the club's history.

Playing an exciting style of attacking football, Atalanta have been the surprise package of the last few seasons in Italian football.

Since the 1970s, Atalanta have been promoted from Serie B nine times and relegated from Serie A nine times.  They rarely finished in the top half of the Serie A table but since the appointment of former Genoa coach Gian Piero Gasperini to look after the team in 2016 La Dea have enjoyed consistent improvement.

Atalanta's top striker, the
Colombian Luis Muriel

They have finished in the top four of Serie A in three of the last four seasons, qualifying for the Champions League for the last two years by finishing in third place.

They qualified for the knock-out phase of the European competition each time, reaching the quarter-finals two years ago.

They also reached the final of the Coppa Italia for the first time in 23 years in 2019, losing to Lazio.

Yet it remains the case that the 1962-63 Coppa Italia, when the defeated Torino in the final, is the only major trophy in the club’s 114-year history.

It something Gasperini had in mind after the win over Benevento when he told reporters his team “have done nothing yet”, warning that they should take nothing for granted. 

“We are responsible for our own destiny. We must keep our feet grounded because we’ve done nothing yet," he said.

Atalanta is named after 
a Greek goddess

“We have two league games and the Coppa Italia final. We have played many matches, but the strength of this team is to take one step at a time.

“We are fighting, we are in the race with Milan, Napoli and Juventus for a top-four finish in Serie A, and only one won’t reach the target. Anything can still happen.”

Like most teams at the top level in Italy, the Atalanta team is a multi-national group. 

Their defence regularly includes two Argentinians, a German and an Albanian.

The midfield stars are a Swiss, a Dutchman and a Ukrainian, while their two best strikers, Muriel and Duván Zapata, are both Colombian internationals.

The home-grown players who have featured most often this season are goalkeepers Pierluigi Gollini and Marco Sportiello, defender Rafael Tolói - Brazilian-born but an Italian national - and midfielder Matteo Pessina.

Atalanta play their home matches at the
expanded Gewiss Stadium in the Città Bassa

Atalanta’s brand of free-flowing attack-minded football has thrilled audiences and made them Italy’s highest goalscorers for each of the last three seasons. Last year, they totalled 98 in Serie A, the highest tally by any team for more than 70 years.

This season they have found the net 86 times in Serie A, of which Muriel has 22, level with Inter-Milan’s Romelu Lukaku and behind only Cristiano Ronaldo of Juventus (28) among the leading individual goalscorers.

Atalanta’s nickname of La Dea stems from the club’s creation in 1907 by students of the Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi, the important high school in Bergamo, who named the club after the female athlete of the same name in Greek mythology, who had the status of goddess in her own region.

The club’s badge contains the profile of a woman with flowing hair, representing the mythological Atalanta.

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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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Sparkling Atalanta thrash AC Milan 5-0

Gian Piero Gasparini's team in top form

Argentinian striker Alejandro 'Papu' Gomez opened
the scoring in Atalanta's historic win

Bergamo’s top football team, the Serie A club Atalanta Bergamasca Calcio - generally known as simply Atalanta - capped off a memorable year by thrashing the mighty AC Milan 5-0 at their home ground, the Gewiss Stadium, on Sunday.

It was the biggest defeat Milan had suffered for 21 years. Atalanta’s goals came from Alejandro Gomez, Mario Pasalic, Josip Ilicic (two) and Luis Muriel.

Milan are struggling to mount a challenge at the moment, yet with 18 Serie A titles and seven European Cup/Champions League titles to their name remain one of the giants of Italian football.

They had not been beaten by such a margin in any competition since Roma beat them 5-0 in 1998.

Atalanta, by contrast, are enjoying one of the most successful periods in their 112-year history.

They are six-times winners of Serie B but only in recent seasons have begun to challenge the top teams in Serie A.  Under head coach Gian Piero Gasparini, the nerazzurri finished fourth in Serie A in 2016-17 and took third place last season, qualifying to play in the Champions League for the first time.

The success has continued this season with Atalanta through to the knock-out stages in the Champions League after finishing runners-up to Manchester City in Group C.

In Serie A, they are up to fifth place with Sunday’s win, which again puts them in contention for one of the European competitions next season.

Atalanta play their home games at the Gewiss Stadium, the current name of the Atleti Azzurri d'Italia stadium in the Borgo Santa Caterina district of Bergamo, only a short walk from the centre of the city.

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Historic moment for Atalanta

Bergamo team qualify for Champions League

Atalanta have never before qualified
to play in the Champions League

Bergamo football team Atalanta made club history last night by clinching third place in the final Serie A table, meaning they qualify for the Champions League for the first time.

Atalanta Bergamasca Calcio, to give the club’s full name, beat Sassuolo 3-1 to finish the season with 69 points.

Inter Milan, who finished on 69 points but with an inferior goal difference, also qualify for the Champions League - Europe’s premier soccer competition - but AC Milan (68 points) and AS Roma (66) have to settle for places in the Europa League.

Two years ago, the Orobici or Nerazzurri, as they are popularly known, qualified for the Europa League, giving them their first taste of European football for 26 years, and did so again last season. This season they reached the final of the Coppa Italia for the first time in 23 years, losing to Rome club Lazio.

But qualifying for the Champions League trumps those achievements, reflecting well on the qualities of coach Gian Piero Gasparini, who has been in charge for just under three years.

Atalanta began the current Serie A season with a victory over Frosinone but failed to win any of their next seven matches, suffering four defeats.

Colombian striker Duvan Zapata
has been Atalanta's top scorer

But they triumphed in six of the next eight to put themselves in contention for a top four place and have achieved consistent results since then, finishing the season with an unbeaten run of 13 matches.

They have been praised for their entertaining, attacking football under Gasparini. No team in Serie A has scored more goals than their tally of 77, which is seven more than champions Juventus.

Colombian Duvan Zapata, who finished as the club's top scorer this season with 23 goals, netted the first goal in the win over Sassuolo, which was officially a home match but was played at the Sassuolo stadium in Emilia Romagna because of redevelopment work at Atalanta’s own stadium in the Città Bassa. The others were scored by Argentinian forward Papu Gomez and the Croatian midfielder Mario Pasalic, on loan from Chelsea.

During the closing weeks of the season, the Orobici achieved some spectacular results, including away wins at Napoli and Lazio and a draw in Turin against Juventus.

Setting aside tribal loyalties, their achievement has been admired by Italian football fans because they did it on approximately a quarter of the budget of Juventus and the powerful Milan clubs.

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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.

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