Gasperini before Bologna-Atalanta: “We won’t replace Malinovskyi, Zapata recovered”

The Atalanta coach on the eve of the away match in Bologna: “If anything has been missing up to now, I think it’s offensive prolificacy”

If Thiago Motta is forced to “invent” an attack, Gian Piero Gasperini has great abundance for the first time and he also has it in that sector: tomorrow, in addition to Musso and Demiral (“who, however, only resumed this week after being stopped a lot, so he’s not yet ready to be at the top”) the Atalanta coach will also have Zapata, “who has recovered well”; Muriel “even if unfortunately she has to live with annoying and painful heel pain and has to recover the best condition, the one he had found a little before the break, when he had played 4-5 games of absolute level and was physically very tight”; wanting Pasalic, “who is not flashy, almost sly, but has a physicality and a presence in the area sometimes even superior to those of the forwards, and great ability to insert: this is how he has always scored his goals”.

And then obviously Lookman and Hojlund, “who has great energy, an important frequency of steps that allows him to be quick right away and kick well, with great power: we’re working a lot on aerial play, he needs to improve his connection with the team but he has everything to be considered a player of great perspective”. Malinovskyi’s name will almost certainly not appear in the squad this afternoon, “who is in talks to leave, and at the moment there is no idea of ​​replacing him, then we’ll see what the market will say”, but the options are however many and therefore – this is today’s message from the Gasp – it is time to “increase offensive prolificacy, especially of the forwards: if something has been missing up to now, I think it is this. It is the concreteness in the goal area which then end enhances the game of the whole team, and for this we need to improve the technical and athletic aspect. We need to be more concrete in team situations: Hojlund’s goal in La Spezia was above all an individual play. And we also need to grow in ability goalscoring from inactive balls, which has an important impact to be a level team”.

More goals scored, then. Even more important than suffering less: “The tactical aspect has little to do with the performance of the defence. In the first part of the championship, Atalanta were at a lower level, but they had also obtained a perhaps exaggerated share of points, for what they had done. Against Napoli, Lecce, Inter, we conceded goals in the small area, so we’ve always held up well on a tactical level. And, apart from against Lazio, in terms of the number of chances, we’ve also done better than our opponents.” A paradox that Gasperini also saw in La Spezia last Wednesday: “It was in the first half, when we were 2-0 down, that we had a better continuity of action, while in the second half we risked more. But we know that by now all the matches are difficult, it is enough to see results and performances that mature also on other fields.The road that we set out to follow must be crossed by remaining faithful to our way of playing and of proposing ourselves: it is in that aspect that we must do better The fact that on Wednesday the team recovered the result in the 93rd minute means that they won’t give up: I complained about the fact that they no longer knew how to straighten out certain situations, in this sense that 2-2 was a good sign”. To be checked again tomorrow evening, against a Bologna team “to whom Thiago Motta is leaving his mark, trying to raise his performance through the game, inspired by his characteristics as a player”.

ttn-14