Atalanta Bergamo’s triumph: a divine fairy tale in football heaven

Until Wednesday, it seemed as if Italian football had returned to normality in 2024: Inter Milan had won the “Scudetto”, the championship title, and Juventus Turin had won the cup. One year after the miracle of Naples, when SSC Napoli were at the top of the table for the first time in 33 years and the city at the foot of Vesuvius sank into the “Scudetto” frenzy for weeks, they were back where they had always been. The big, rich clubs from the north are sorting things out among themselves, everything as usual.

But then something happened that even experts had hardly thought possible: a small club from the north of Italy, Atalanta Bergamo, defeated the invincibles from Germany, Bayer Leverkusen, the club that had won the German championship and had been in Dublin for the last 51 years, on Wednesday evening in Dublin games were unbeaten. The club of the hour, led by Xabi Alonso, the former Spanish international who had completed his journeyman role as coach with Leverkusen.

The final score was 3-0, a clear and deserved victory for Atalanta, almost a miracle, with three wonderful goals from Nigerian striker Ademola Lookman. The Bergamasco team had cracked the code of the German champions, and Italy suddenly had a wonderful football story to tell. The “Dea”, as Atalanta are called because of the goddess with the flowing hair in their coat of arms, has enchanted the whole country.

A sign of life from the hardworking

“It is an indescribable joy, comparable only to the moment in which a child is born,” it says euphorically in the “Corriere della Sera”. “Divina”, divine, is the title of the “Gazzetta dello Sport”. Even in the country’s political epicenter, the Palazzo Chigi in Rome, people felt compelled to react. “A historic success for Bergamo, a pride for all of Italy,” said Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on X.

When SSC Napoli won the championship title a year ago, it was interpreted as an expression of the city in the south’s increased self-confidence, as a sign to the north that Naples was a force to be reckoned with, as proof of new economic and cultural dynamism. Winning the “Scudetto” was part of the country’s long and difficult struggle with the “Mezzogiorno”, the supposedly backward south, which had been at the bottom of all statistics for many years.

In the case of Bergamo, things are a little different. The provincial town with its approximately 120,000 inhabitants is only about fifty kilometers from Milan and is always somewhat in the shadow of the Lombard metropolis. But this is not a question of poor versus rich; Bergamo is far too wealthy for that.

For many “Bergamaschi”, winning the Europa League is more of a success in competition with a center that absorbs everything and demands all the attention for itself – a sign of life of the quiet against the loud, of the capable against the prepotent, of those who do it without glamour , but with patience and hard work you can get to the top.

“Winning with Atalanta is one of those football fairy tales that rarely happen,” said coach Gian Piero Gasperini after the game. “It shows that there is still scope for real performance, and also scope for ideas. Not everything has to come down to cold, hard money.”

Atalanta’s last title win was over sixty years ago. In 1963 the team won the Cup Final title. Since then she has been running after the big boys. At times the club even had to be content with the third Italian league. Since “Gasp”, as Gian Piero Gasperini calls them, has been coaching the club since 2016, Atalanta has had a say in Italian football again. The team now regularly occupies top places and is almost a permanent guest in the Champions League.

Gasperini’s recipe for success is based on the fact that he integrates relatively unknown players and indoctrinates them into a system that in turn involves switching to the offensive in a rush when the opportunity arises. Sometimes individual players outgrow themselves in this way, stand out and later move to bigger clubs – for a lot of money – which is a lucrative business for Atalanta. The club, which is owned by the entrepreneur and former footballer Antonio Percassi, is considered to be economically sound and well run.

«Let’s go to Atalanta»

But it’s true: it’s never been all the way up to the top – up to the “Notte della Dea” in Dublin, on the Night of the Goddess, as the TV sports reporters literally shouted after Lookman’s 3-0 win. They’ve finally done it, Atalanta is no longer just that efficient team that always works well but never makes it to the top of the podium. Since Wednesday evening she has been in seventh football heaven.

The city knows how to thank her. She is strongly connected to her football club. The sympathy for the club is perhaps even deeper here than elsewhere. When the region around Bergamo was hit harder by Covid than almost any other area in Europe during the pandemic and pictures of truck convoys with coffins made the rounds, the football club was something like the last glimmer of hope for many. The formerly notorious fans from the Nordkurve helped to build a field hospital on the exhibition grounds, or they bought food for the elderly and brought it home to them – as if Atalanta was giving them the certainty that the tragedy could be overcome.

While elsewhere in Italy you go “to the stadium” or “to the game” on Sunday, in Bergamo you simply go “to Atalanta”. Atalanta is Bergamo, Bergamo is Atalanta. Nothing expresses the city’s connection to its club as well as this saying, says Giorgio Gori, the mayor. “Andiamo all’Atalanta,” say the fans here. Since the night in Dublin, they’ve liked doing it even more.