Atalanta, Gasperini: "Precious draw but a great match will be needed in the return leg"

Marseille (France), 2 May 2024 – Atalanta snatches a precious 1-1 draw against the Marseille Velodrome in the first leg of the Europa League semi-final. Everything will therefore be decided in a week at the Gewiss Stadium, the Nerazzurri's stronghold who this evening got off to a flying start. in the 11th minute they broke the deadlock thanks to Gianluca Scamacca's goal, good at breaking away from behind the opposing defense following the development of an action he himself initiated. The advantage of the Orobic team - soon forced to deal with the injury suffered by Kolasinac - however lasted just 9', because in the 20th minute Marseille managed to equalize the score with Mbemba's whip from the edge. The hosts then devoured former Milan player Aubameyang - launched face to face with Musso and in the second half they tried to further raise the engine revs, keeping the Nerazzurri in check who, however, not without effort (crossbar for Ounahi, they withstood the impact and in the final they in turn came close to overtaking again with a poisonous left-footed shot from Miranchuk. A golden draw also according to Nerazzurri coach Giampiero Gasperini, who to Sky's microphones after the match still wanted to keep his team's attention high in view of the return match: “Scamacca's goal? A great play but I expected a few more. An excellent movement and a pass with the right timing – explained Gasperini –. I will be fundamental in returning to Bergamo to propose more situations of this kind. The conditions are there to be able to do this. This evening, apart from a few plays, we suffered some dangerous situations and had to suffer. There is the return leg and this is an important result because on this pitch Olympique had only lost against Paris Saint-Genmain and it is a team that gives the best of itself here." The only flaw in the evening for the Bergamo players was the injury that occurred to Kolasinac in the first half of the match: “A grave loss. We had to adapt De Roon at the back, redesign the midfield and then we had fewer substitutions towards the end. Now we'll see how long he has to stay out. Hien was also missing, but in defense the boys were very good at limiting their outbursts which were dangerous at certain moments." On the return leg: “Marseille less dangerous away from home? We'll see this. I don't trust it very much. He reached the semi-finals and therefore means that even away from home he can be dangerous. We had seen them play in the league and in the cup where they scored four goals against Villareal. Their results away from home were not up to the level of their home ones but they are a good team, they have some qualities on a physical level. We will have to play a great match. Of course, we will play at home and 1-1 is still an excellent result, but we will have to win. We want to go to the final, but we will have to be much better in attack than we were today. Tactically, it will not be necessary to offer them space on the counterattack, and at the same time score more than one goal because we see few 0-0s or 1-0s in Europe. These teams are capable of scoring a goal no matter how you play and therefore it will be necessary to increase our quality, speed in the attacking phase and put our attackers in a position to score."