On Saturday, Serie A kicks off, not so that many outside of Italy would notice.
There’s an opacity to Italian football. I follow Atalanta and the dearth of news from the main sources I read (BBC, Guardian) is some combination of silent and non-existent. The Guardian’s Atalanta page has a 500 word story previewing the Serie A season with one mention of Atalanta. Speaking about Inter they say “Robin Gosens has shown his quality for Atalanta and Germany before”.
In a lot of ways it’s better this way. I don’t follow any Atalanta blogs either (are there any?) and so I don’t even get any of the normal rumor mill stuff that we get with Arsenal, that constant downpour of news both fake and real that floods a fan of a club as big – and as hyped – as Arsenal. With Atalanta, there’s just the steady trickle from the official twitter page and a few little bits and pieces in the Guardian. I don’t mind it at all, in fact, I think I’ll keep it this way and won’t be seeking out any more news sources.
In a sense it’s the way football was back when I first started following Arsenal. At the turn of the century there weren’t thousands of pods, blogs, ITK twitter accounts, weirdoes who are actually obsessed with bread, and multiple international news outlets covering Arsenal. In fact, I didn’t even discover any of that stuff for almost 6 years into following Arsenal. And once I did, I thought – without any actual thought – “I should add my voice”.
And now maybe I’m doing something similar here with Atalanta. Maybe I’m here adding my voice to a growing number of people talking about Italian football. I don’t really know. I just hope what I’m doing doesn’t in any way take away from the wonderfully sleepy way that I get to enjoy Atalanta. I’m just watching football. That’s it.
In thinking about writing this preview, I did what I would normally do with Arsenal and jumped on transfermarkt and fbref to see what deals have been done this summer and what the squad looks like. In a way, with Gasperini (the head coach) it almost doesn’t matter what deals they have done. He’s like Wenger in that way: able to keep the ship going in the same relative direction year after year, despite massive sales and few new players coming in. Atalanta had finished 3rd every season for the last 4 years, until 2021/22 when they slipped to 8th.
Gasperini’s men still played the open, attacking style he’s known for. Last year they finished 2nd in xG but their defense slipped significantly. In short, they are a team which can concede four goals one week and score six the next, something that literally happened on matchday 20 and 21 last season.
In a way that makes them fun to watch and in the exact same way it makes them difficult to watch. Giving up four goals to Mourinho’s Roma on matchday 18 last season reminded me so much of when Jose used to get one over on Arsene Wenger. A combination of sad and frustrating; sastrating.
The question is what will Gasperini do this season to shore up the defense a bit? Well, if the transfer market is any indication, not much. It’s really hard to tell with Italian clubs what exactly is going on with their transfers. You can see on transfermarkt that Atalanta “bought” Jeremie Boga, Ederson, Demiral, and Lookman. But if you look a bit closer you see that the Demiral deal was basically done last year, Boga has been in and out of the Atalanta squad for years, and so only Lookman and Ederson are the real fresh faces.
Lookman you might know from his time in the Premier League. London born (Wandsworth) and moved around from club to club, he’s had a hard time establishing himself in England. Italy will be a new chance for him: Gasperini will give him chances, if he can play the way Gasperini wants. The Atalanta coach is uncompromising with his players. But if Lookman can get the game plan down, he could get a fresh lease on his footballing career. Gasperini has made gold from players like him before (Zapata and Muriel).
Ederson is a totally unknown player to me. Brazilian MFer who played for Salernitana last season but only made 15 appearances. He’s got some stiff competition to get past to start at Atalanta. Frueler and Koopmeiners seem to be locks. But that is one of the fun things about Atalanta, every season Gasperini seems to find some new gem. Maybe Ederson is the one? My gut says no but only based on absolutely no information, lol.
But it’s a new season, new things to discover. New players to cheer.
As for the prospects, Atalanta probably won’t be anywhere near the title race this season. Inter have gotten Lukaku back and Milan are still the presumptive favorites. Meanwhile Napoli are still very strong, Juventus are Juventus (which is to say that they are Man U levels of disfunction), and there’s the small matter of a little Portuguese guy with a huge mouth who is in charge of a resurgent Roma. To be honest with you, I think Atalanta will finish 6th this season (538 has them 4th but in a statistical tie with Roma).
But regardless of where they finish, it will be fun to watch just as a break from the “football” at Arsenal. And I don’t mean that Arsenal don’t play good football, they do, I mean that social aspects of Arsenal – the fandom – seems much more important than the football these days. It’s more important to talk about Arsenal than to actually watch them. With Atalanta it’s exactly the opposite.
Kickoff is this Saturday away to Genoa 0930 PDT. Watch the matches on Paramount plus in the USA.
I’ve been puzzling over which localish team to follow since moving over here a couple of years ago, closest is Piacenza but it’s the dullest town in Italy, pricked my ears up at Fabregas joining Como, I like the history and underdog status of Torino but this has given me the nudge I needed, cheers! Bergamo is a gem of a place and the crest is very cool. Will try get to a match soon and post a writeup!
I’ve just been watching the Arsenal doc and I have a question. What do you think would have happened if Wenger was given this kind of funding by the owners?
By the way I am fully behind Arteta, but I suddenly remembered the years of sell-to-buy. Even in the final years when we were financially sound there wasn’t much cash to use.
Wenger would have finished top four every season on half the spend.
Where is the money (or ownership change-of-heart) coming from, do you think?
As Josh Kroenke keeps reminding us, his family did not “own” AFC until 2018. It was a fractured board room with Kroenke holding the majority share and Usmanov holding the remaining, what was it, 40%? It was a standoff for a decade to see who would blink first. In the end it was Usmanov, and now KSE are investing in Arsenal like the massive asset it is for them.
I’m not as confident as Tim on Wenger, at least not at the end of his career. I think he lost the ability to inspire his players like he used to, for whatever reason, and also either lost control of player recruitment or lost his focus on the technique and mobility that defined his best teams.
We know where it came from: Kroenke signed a massive line of credit against Arsenal. The money is coming from us. Gotta hope it pays off.
“It’s more important to talk about Arsenal than to actually watch them.”
You nailed it, that’s modern fandom for better or worse. I’m just as into it as anyone. Arsenal now represents this millions strong global hive mind and having influence within that hive is lucrative for rapid exposure of ideas, personalities, products, and so much more. The impact of the business of Arsenal and the politics of Arsenal is much greater than the impact of its football.
Speaking of Italian football, I saw we are linked with another Italian midfielder, Tonali, from AC Milan. Seems the right profile for the type of signings we’ve been trying to make (young, championship pedigree) and in a position where we need to strengthen but a) I’ve never seen him play and b) I always worry about trying to export Italian players from Italy and c) I doubt he would be enticed to compete with Partey and forego CL football. So I would be surprised if anything came of this. Ditto for Pino.
The Neto links have been shot down by various sources so this is hardly worth saying, but it always seemed strange for us to spend money on a player Wolves are trying to upgrade on. He’s got impressive skills and a nice list of talents on WhoScored, but people begging Arsenal to sign him is so weird to me.
Tonali is really good. But Arsenal have a weird history of never really even buying Italian players and the few we have bought almost never played for us. also, he’s fighting for the Scudetto in Milan, with Milan, his boyhood team.
I was trying to think of successful Italian players in the PL. Clubs buy a lot from Serie A but not really Italian nationals. I came up with Zola, Balotelli, Jorginho, and of course Arsenal legend Emiliano Viviano. I’m sure I’m forgetting some but it doesn’t seem like a long list. Looks like West Ham signed Scamacca so we’ll see how that goes.
Vialli would be another one.
The great Arturo Lupoli suited up for the Arsenal.
A dive into Wikipedia shows that he scored goals for us in the Carling Cup; and he played games against City, Everton and United…
And that at 35 years old, he’s on his 17th team (books or on loan); the current one in Italy. He’s a forward.
Info supplied, notwithstanding your qualifier “successful”
There were a couple of decent goalies too.
Carlo Cudicini.
And Arsenal’s own Vito Mannone
And we’ve left out Di Canio.
Good ones. I forgot about Vito!
Not joking when I say that people rarely think of keepers as footballers
I have never seen a more crazed hope stemming from a debut from an Italian in EPL since Ravanelli scored a hattrick for Middlesbrough against Liverpool.
Well, that strategy’s never backfired, has it now?