Serie A | Atalanta 5-1 Genoa: Magical Retegui hat-trick deals a Manita

Mateo Retegui bagged a hat-trick against his former club, along with an Ederson scorcher and Marten de Roon volley, as Atalanta crushed Genoa 5-1.

La Dea crushed Shakhtar Donetsk 3-0 midweek in the Champions League, but had one point from the last two Serie A games and a growing injury crisis ruling out Odilon Kossounou, Berat Djimsiti, Matteo Ruggeri, Marco Brescianini, Rafael Toloi, Giorgio Scalvini and Gianluca Scamacca, but the good news was the return of Isak Hien. Genoa scraped only one point from their last four matches, in which they scored one goal and conceded eight. Ruslan Malinovskyi, Milan Badelj, Junior Messias, Caleb Ekuban and Morten Frendrup were all absent.

See how it unfolded on the Liveblog.

Ademola Lookman’s volley was over the bar and his corner skimmed the far post on a Hien glancing header before Atalanta broke the deadlock with a well-worked move, as a series of one-touch passes concluded with Lookman rolling across for Mateo Retegui to come sliding in from six yards. He did not celebrate against his old club.

Pierluigi Gollini rushed off his line to parry from Lookman and Sead Kolasinac saw his angled drive flash across the face of goal, as did the Mario Pasalic header.

Atalanta did double their lead straight after the restart, as Gollini only parried the long-range Ederson effort and Retegui was quick to pounce on the rebound.

Ederson had come close in that move, but got his own name on the scoresheet with a screamer that smashed into the roof of the net from the edge of the area.

It should’ve been 4-0 moments later, but Pasalic ballooned over from the Kolasinac assist from just 10 yards out, then Gollini got down to smother another Ederson daisy-cutter.

Lazar Samardzic came off the bench and his deflected effort was a big test for Gollini, but VAR showed it struck Alessandro Vogliacco’s hand, so Retegui converted the penalty to complete his hat-trick.

Nicolò Zaniolo nearly got a fifth soon after on Retegui’s slide-rule pass, but thumped the outside of the upright, but it did arrive when Johan Vasquez only cleared a corner to the edge of the box for Marten de Roon’s sensational right-foot volley.

Despite not conceding any Champions League goals, Atalanta continue to leak them in Serie A, allowing Jeff Ekhator to spring the offside trap and get a Genoa consolation on Filippo Melegoni’s assist.