Atalanta draws at Gewiss against Lecce, playing in an unreal atmosphere

Bergamo, 27 April 2025 – Atalanta draws 1-1 at home against Lecce and slows down in the race for Champions, while maintaining third place alone at 65 points, paying the price in one match conditioned by the postponement and the unreal climate which preceded the race, with the stadium was silent for a quarter of an hour, the sincere applause of all the Bergamo public to the Lecce players and an eblack mourning cloth rules in the guest sector with the writing GRATIANO.

A match that Lecce did not want to play, as the Salento club reiterated in black and white in a harsh statement issued one hour before the match: “US Lecce believes that the League's decision to recover the match with Atalanta a few hours after the disappearance of our Graziano Fiorita, is terribly disrespectful of the grave loss that has struck the boy's family, the Club and the Lecce fans. In other cases, equally painful, more reasonable decisions have been made. A hierarchy of death emerges based on the coat of arms of the club affected, or worse still, in consideration of the role played by the person who passes away".

Lecce players

For this Lecce chose to wear a white shirt without logos or emblems and black writing NO VALUE NO COLOR. In the end the match was played, in a deathly silence for the first 15 minutes, then a very harsh protest, always against the Football League, by the Nerazzurri ultras from the Curva Nord, with a repeated launching of smoke bombs onto the pitch which forced a one-minute stoppage of play to remove them.

Lecce pushed forward in the first half with counterattacks, finding the net with Karlsson's penalty caused by a clumsy handball in a melee by Hien. Atalanta dominated the first half hour of the second half besieging Lecce in its defensive bunker, but risking 0-2 on a counterattack in the 55th minute which was unfortunately failed by a free doubling. Then the Nerazzurri flash: in the 66th minute Cuadrado was brought down in the area by a naive kick from Karlsson and Retegui scored his 24th goal of the championship from eleven meters, thus equalling Pippo Inzaghi's record from 1996/97. A minute later Retegui again headed the ball into the post to save Falcone from capitulation. The final with the teams tired, who were content with a draw that held the Goddess in third place and allows Lecce to breathe, rising to 27, two points above the third-last place. It ends with the Curva Nord raising a chorus for 'Graziano' and applauds the Lecce players who took to the field despite the mourning.