Atalanta v Udinese: A Lot of Running Around to Little Effect

By: Martha | October 6th, 2007

I will kick your ass. Though Ricardo Zampagna blew the game’s best chance when he smashed a (dubious) penalty shot against the bar, a 0-0 draw was a very fair result for this one, a match in which neither team offering much of a threat to the opposing goal, despite good spells of possession by both. While neither of these teams is as skilled as those currently surrounding them in the top half of the table, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them give better teams trouble, and maybe hang around in the area of UEFA Cup spots as the season goes along. Atalanta, in particular, are incredibly organized at the back, and though Udine’s trident attack didn’t mount much of a threat today, the combination of Quagliarella (who seems to have decided that anything within 40 yards is fair game), Floro Flores and Pepe is enough to give anyone fits.

Atalanta were without Cristiano Doni, and his absence hurt them as they lacked much creativity in the final third until the late arrival of young Marino Defendi. That said, they defended almost flawlessly, particularly in the first half, and forced Udinese into all sort of bad giveaways just by sitting back in the midfield and forcing them to posess the ball. Udine stepped up in the second half and took real control of the game but, again, all the posession almost never resulted in a shot on target; Atalanta keeper Ferdinando Coppola made only a handful of saves all night.

On the attacking side of the ball for Atalanta, until Defendi came on with about half an hour left, it was all about toughness and work rate, two things the Nerazzurri do awfully well. Diego De Ascentis was absolutely everywhere in the midfield, while Antonio Langella (just back from injury) and Zampagna ran their legs off and tried valiantly to make an attack out of anything that came their way. Though Atalanta are never going to blow anyone away, they’ve got a stretch of four games coming up (Torino home, Empoli away, Cagliari home, Catania away) from which they could, with a bit of luck, take 10-12 points. Imagine what the table will look like if they can pull that off!