Atalanta went into the second leg of their Champions League play-off against Club Brugge as favourites to progress but, despite dominating, they crashed out in dramatic fashion.
Gian Piero Gasperini’s Atalanta are, and have been for a while now, one of the most exciting teams in Europe.
Last season, they won the Europa League, blowing away an until-then-unbeaten Bayer Leverkusen in the final last May, using an eye-catching, high-risk, and high-scoring style of play that was at odds with Italian football’s cautious and defence-first reputation. Gasperini has rightly been lauded as one of the modern game’s great tacticians.
For the neutral, then, Tuesday’s shock 3-1 defeat at home to Club Brugge was a bitter disappointment. The result confirmed a 5-2 aggregate defeat in the play-off round, meaning the Champions League lost one of its most entertaining teams and one that, as they showed in the Europa League final, are capable of the kind of performance with which even the best teams can’t cope.
Needing a win after a 2-1 loss in the first leg and no doubt still riled by the controversial last-minute penalty Brugge were awarded in Belgium, Atalanta went for it. But they were pegged back early on, when 19-year-old Chemsdine Talbi fired Brugge into a surprise away lead.
But even at that stage, Gaserpini’s side would have been confident of overturning the deficit. They scored 20 goals in eight games in the league phase of this season’s Champions League. Only Barcelona (28) and Borussia Dortmund (22) scored more.
They piled forward and created chance after chance. Every one of their starting outfielders and three of their five substitutes had at least one shot, as they racked up 30 attempts in total. But they ended up unable to break Brugge down with any consistency. Only five teams have ever had more shots in a Champions League match that they have lost (excluding extra-time).
Brugge, meanwhile, had just seven shots but scored three goals. Talbi, 19 years and 285 days old, scored a second midway through the first half to become the fourth-youngest player to score a brace in a Champions League knockout match, after Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland and Nicolò Zaniolo. Ferran Jutglà fired in a rocket on the stroke of half-time to give Brugge an unassailable 3-0 half-time lead.
Ademola Lookman came off the bench at the break and within 34 seconds had given his side hope, scoring the fastest goal ever netted by a substitute from the start of the second half of a Champions League match. He went on to have more shots (seven) than anyone else on the pitch, but one of his misses had consequences extending beyond the outcome of this match.
After Juan Cuadrado had won a VAR-reviewed penalty following a foul by Christos Tzolis, Lookman grabbed the ball. He struck his spot-kick poorly, and 36-year-old former Liverpool goalkeeper Simon Mignolet easily pushed his effort away.
Gasperini could not hide his exasperation after the game.
“Lookman was not supposed to take that penalty,” the Atalanta manager said. “He is one of the worst penalty takers I’ve ever seen.
“He has a frankly terrible record. Even in training, he converts very few of them. [Mateo] Retegui and [Charles] De Ketelaere were there, but in a moment of enthusiasm after scoring Lookman decided to take the ball and that was a gesture I did not appreciate at all.”
There was to be no heroic comeback, and Atalanta crashed out with a damaging defeat at home to the team that finished 24th in the league phase, and it was marred further by captain Rafael Tolói losing his head late on and getting sent off.
The Italians dominated the entire game, as the below momentum graphic shows, but Brugge took their chances, scoring five goals across this two-legged play-off, having scored just seven times in eight league-phase matches.
The round of 16 is therefore without the team that finished ninth in the league phase, one point outside the automatic qualification spots (whether or not that is fair is a debate for another day), as Atalanta’s poor form continued. They have now won only three of their last 14 games, having also been eliminated from the Coppa Italia earlier this month.
There may be concerns that Gasperini’s Atalanta are coming towards the end of their journey together; with an average age of 30y 45d, on Tuesday they had named their oldest starting XI in a Champions League match.
They are slipping away from the title race in Italy, too, third in the table, five points off top spot having led the league as recently as the turn of the year. On current form, they may need Serie A to earn a fifth Champions League spot if they are to get back into the competition for next season, but that is looking increasingly unlikely.
Atalanta’s defeat came hours after Milan had exited the Champions League with a disappointing draw at home to Feyenoord. They too had been favourites to progress but ultimately failed, with Theo Hernández’s red card for two very avoidable yellows proving their undoing.
According to the Opta supercomputer, those two sides being knocked out leaves Serie A with just a 23.6% chance of gaining an extra Champions League spot for next season (awarded to the two nations whose teams perform best in European competition). Serie A’s chance had been 44.0% coming into this round of matches, showing just how much these results could be felt.
Spain were the biggest beneficiaries, with La Liga’s chances of a bonus Champions League spot rising from 56.4% to 75.9% without any Spanish side playing on Tuesday. The Premier League’s chances are now at 99.6%, based largely on the fact that the supercomputer believes Liverpool, Tottenham, Manchester United and Chelsea are all deemed to have a decent chance of winning their respective European competitions.
It was a night to forget for Italian football. Serie A teams will need a few of their La Liga counterparts to capitulate like Atalanta and Milan did if they are to earn a fifth Champions League spot.
For Atalanta, this could be a difficult result to recover from.
Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You can also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
