Atalanta can beat anyone in the Champions League

They’ve been scoring goals for fun all year – Atalanta can beat any team on their day, and that resilience could translate into the Champions League too.

Last week was a historic week for Atalanta. In fact, this whole season has been historic for the Italian club, because it has been their first-ever campaign in the coveted Champions League tournament. While they started out extremely slow, with 3 losses in the first 3 matches to Manchester City, Shakhtar, and Dinamo Zagreb, they managed to turn things around miraculously and qualify for the knockout stages, after winning 7 points in all 3 return legs against the same sides.

Now, Atalanta are flying in both domestic competition and in Europe – their whopping 4-1 win over Valencia in the 1st leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie turned a lot of heads, as have their recent 7-2 and 7-0 Serie A wins over Lecce and Torino respectively.

If you look around at the remaining teams in the Champions League, you’ll see all of the big names. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Bayern, Man City, Juventus and many others. Most of these clubs will be considered contenders, but if you truly take a deeper look at their form, most of them are actually struggling!

Bayern have been dominant lately, sure, but Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Man City have notable weaknesses and inconsistencies to their game, while Juventus and Atletico Madrid are playing poorly overall. Liverpool have even slipped up in their more recent fixtures.

What I’m saying is, nobody is the clear favourite, and everyone is vulnerable.

For a club like Atalanta, who have the ability to match any team in the world in terms of goals scored, and have an immensely deep squad – this could be a great opportunity.

In reality, Atalanta can challenge any team in the Champions League this year. Of course, I am in no way saying they can win the whole thing, but upsets are what they do best, and where better to do that than in the Champions League? Ajax showed us last year that miracles are possible in the upper echelons of European football if you are organized, determined, and have immense collective and individual quality. Atalanta have all of those traits too…

They’ve pretty much punched their ticket to the quarter-finals already, with the dominant 4-1 win over Valencia that I mentioned earlier. While there are worse teams to draw in the quarter-finals than Atalanta, I guarantee you the team that does indeed draw them still won’t be happy with it.

The 3-4-1-2 system that Gian Piero Gasperini has adapted at the club has been an overwhelming success, getting the best out of their plethora of dangerous, underrated forwards, such as Alejandro ‘Papu’ Gomez, Duvan Zapata, Josip Ilicic, and Luis Muriel. Lesser-known players such as Hans Hateboer, Robin Gosens, Jose Palomino, and Ruslan Malinovskyi have also had immense seasons to keep everything ticking.

Atalanta still have to wrap up their Champions League round of 16 tie against Valencia, but with a 4-1 aggregate lead, it’s safe to assume that they will be in the hat for the quarter-finals draw. When the latter stages do come around, don’t expect this brilliant, exciting team to roll over and concede defeat – no matter who they come up against.