Atalanta continued their dream debut Champions League campaign on Wednesday with a 4-1 win over Valencia in an entertaining last-16 first leg meeting at San Siro.
Gian Piero Gasperini’s Serie A side raced into a two-goal lead by halftime with goals from Hans Hateboer and Josip Ilicic, while Valencia were denied by the post.
Remo Freuler’s curling strike and a second goal for Hateboer looked to have ended the tie as a contest, but substitute Denis Cheryshev gave the Spanish visitors a faint glimmer of hope with an away goal.
Two-time runners-up Valencia will host the Serie A side at the Mestalla Stadium in the return leg on March 10.
Despite the healthy lead his side will take into that game, Gasperini wasn’t entirely satisfied with his team’s performance. “We need to be more precise when we go to the Mestalla,” the Atalanta coach told Sky Sport Italia.
“If we want to get into the quarter-finals, we have to play like this at the Mestalla too, prove we deserve to be there with a show of strength, and win there too.”
More than 45,000 fans travelled to Milan for Wednesday’s game, 51 kilometres away from Atalanta’s hometown of Bergamo, which has a population of just 120,000 people.
Among the Bergamo supporters in the stadium was a boy called Edoardo who took the afternoon off school and whose absence note was retweeted by the mayor of Bergamo Giorgio Gori.
“We inform you that this afternoon Edoardo will be absent from class for cultural-historical reasons,” it read. “He will be experiencing a page in the history books of Bergamo along with his dad.”
Mourinho upbeat
Jose Mourinho said Tottenham Hotspur are still alive despite his side being outplayed by RB Leipzig in their 0-1 loss in the first leg of the last-16 tie.
The Portuguese was eclipsed by Leipzig’s young coach Julian Nagelsmann and the one surprise was that the visitors’ only reward for a dominant display was Timo Werner’s 58th-minute penalty.
“One-nil is 1-0, it’s not 10-0. The result is open. It’s as simple as that,” Mourinho told reporters. “We won’t be the first team to lose 1-0 at home and win the tie away.”
