Champions, Atalanta Midtjylland. Gasperini: 'Cycling after Verona'

The penultimate effort in Group D and Gian Piero Gasperini's Atalanta, the story of an eve in three acts. Necessary premise: "Midtjylland in Denmark wins the title and is in the lead. At the first participation in the Champions League they gave Ajax and Liverpool a hard time too." Information on the infirmary, between Covid (the first two) and the injured: "Miranchuk, Malinovskyi and Pasalic are out, like Gollini, injured on Saturday. Gosens, on the other hand, is recovered". Finally, obstacles to overcome: "We are more compact and we manage to defend better than the first stop, but lately we have lacked freshness and clarity in the goal zone." Read about a possible return to the Colombian couple Muriel-Zapata, Ilicic permitting. The Nerazzurri coach plunges back into Europe after the disappointments in the league: "In the last one we had close to one hundred goals. Strange not to have scored in Spezia and Verona, but we have always created a lot. You can't always find an explanation for everything: the thing. better is to look ahead and pedal as the Papu says ". The Nerazzurri coach's reference is to a story on Monday on Instagram in which captain Gomez wrote 'Head down and pedal much, much', a motto made his own by Berat Djimsiti, present at the remote pre-match conference: "At the words of the Papu there the whole team thinks, you have to pedal. There is the desire to always achieve the best result: we are certainly angry about the defeat against Verona, where after a good performance we paid for two mistakes with two goals taken. " Gasperini does not seem worried by the difference in performance with the season within the borders: "It is not easy to get into the league after playing in the Champions League, but we have always done it at our best: collecting little also depends on the opponent - he observes -. The boys they do not have a different approach: they are subjected to many matches, they are doing it in the best way. Compared to last year (only 1 point, with Manchester City, before the decisive victories with Dinamo Zagreb and Shakhtar, ed) but we are already certain to continue in a European competition in February, so we are further ahead: qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions League will depend on us. " The second place on equal points (7) with the Lancers behind the English (9), after beating the latter at home, makes matchday five in the group more interesting: "We can't know what will happen in Liverpool: maybe the team wins. Ajax and everything is called into question. We hope to reach the last game with two results available, but even this will not be a decisive condition: everyone plays their chances until the end. " The Albanian international, on the other hand, focused on the back ward: "Romero is a very important reinforcement, it is essential that the department is not affected by injuries and recoveries from one match to another. We conceded too many goals at the beginning, then we worked for greater compactness in defense and as a team. I too have grown in these three years as a group ". For his part, before the finish at 6pm at the Bergamo stadium, the Danish coach Brian Priske said he was prepared for the challenge: "We studied Atalanta also in the recent defeat, we have ready schemes and countermeasures, everything is useful to face the challenges. It certainly did not need the victory of Liverpool to discover that they are an aggressive and quality team. The absence of Sisto does not change things. As for the Coronavirus, football must adapt to this situation and, even if it is not ideal, we must move forward ". Defender Alexander Scholz is ready to counter a four-goal attack on inverted fields on 21 October: "We know the offensive potential of Zapata and the others, but the task does not scare us. After all Duvan has not only scored against us." .