In his comment on Free after the 11th matchday of Serie A, Luciano Moggi talks about Atalanta’s excellent form and the Scudetto race which today sees Napoli and Inter ahead of everyone:
“Let’s immediately focus on the big surprise of the day, the home defeat of league leaders Napoli, 3-0, by Gasperini’s Atalanta. Which for us is not a surprise at all also because we have always considered the Goddess a killjoy of the big teams, despite never start with the underdogs
part of the media. Perhaps because every year its managers, regardless of making cycles, decapitate the best players, who are replaced in most cases by rejects from other teams. Since it is impossible to name them all, but only due to lack of space, it would be enough to mention De Kateleare, the player who had even undermined Maldini’s footballing credibility at Milan, or Retegui, who in Genoa was considered a good player, and in Atalanta he became top scorer of the championship. The secret certainly lies in the fact that Percassi, a long-time football manager, understood perfectly that he had in his house a coach who restores athletes and so this year too, with great tranquility, he sold his best player, Koopmeiners, to Juventus, and despite this his team is in close contact with the league leaders. He knows he won’t win the championship, even if the media, after this victory
they consider it among the favourites, but the president is concerned with replenishing the club’s coffers, calculating to the thousandth the value of its brand compared to that of the big ones who almost always bring 70 thousand fans into their stadium as opposed to the 30 thousand at the Gewiss Stadium and obviously relying on on the miraculous qualities of his coach who managed to inflict 3 goals on the strongest defense in Europe (naturally before this match), clouding Napoli’s ideas with the strict “man” marking and the acrobatic qualities of Lookman, author of a double.
In short, we are faced with two great coaches. Giampiero Gasperini, who is building an unrepeatable cycle in Atalanta, is surprising that none of the big clubs have turned to him to cure the economic and sporting “ills” that afflict many of them. He perhaps still carries with him the flaw of having failed at Inter but, in our opinion, in the Nerazzurri team, he just made a mistake in going there without taking into account that the president was Moratti. While Conte, in addition to having reawakened the Neapolitan environment, gave the team back the self-esteem that it had lost after the tenth place in the last championship and without Osimhen who had scored 38 goals in the previous winning season. He is still first in the standings and we think he can fight for the title until the end and perhaps with Inter who follow him in the standings by just one point. Against Venezia the Nerazzurri didn’t play their best game, especially Thuram who was strangely wasteful on the occasion. A difficult but deserved victory where we see Calhanoglu again getting ready for the Champions League and Lautaro scoring the winning goal, giving continuity to his latest performances. Fiorentina’s victorious streak, which began with the 2-1 inflicted on Milan, against Franchi, and ended with the 0-1 with which the Tuscany team beat Toro at the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino. Palladino’s work, which began quietly, is bearing fruit, so much so that the team, in addition to showing quality in its play, has reached third place in the league table tied with Atalanta and places this young coach among the best in the tournament. While after the defeat suffered by
S. Siro from Napoli, Milan revived by winning in Monza 0-1, while Juventus, fresh from the home draw with Parma, went on to take the three points at Bluenergy by beating Udinese, 0-2, both in an attempt to move up the ranks.”