Atalanta co-owner Stephen Pagliuca reveals La Dea offered Rasmus Højlund’s family court-side seats for a Boston Celtics NBA game as part of the deal that brought the Denmark international to Bergamo last summer.
The 20-year-old has taken Serie A by storm with six goals in 22 appearances this season. He moved to the Gewiss Stadium last summer in a €17.2m deal from Strum Graz.
Pagliuca, the co-owner of Atalanta and Boston Celtics in the NBA, revealed an unknown detail about the striker’s transfer to Bergamo during an interview with CBS.
“I came with Luca [Percassi’s son] and Lee [Congerton, head of senior recruitment] and by happenstance, when we sat down, his mother was talking about her background and she’d been a great soccer [football] player as well, football player.
“And it turns out that she played here in Nashville, New Hampshire, and had lots of friends and the Celtics were doing great in those days. And so we had part of the package. We’ve offered them a trip to court-side Celtics [seats] as soon as the season is over.”
Atalanta also signed former Everton and Leicester City striker Ademola Lookman last summer and Pagliuca has been equally impressed.
“Lookman’s very bright and very driven,” he said.
“I was at [a recent practice], probably six o’clock at night and everybody else shuffled in the locker room and Lookman was still out there. It was getting dark, it was cold and he was practising penalty kicks, so he’s a hard worker.
“Højlund is as well and Højlund is just a physical specimen. When I met him in Sturm Graz, I was surprised he was 19 because he was more filled out than even the NBA players we have here. He’s six-foot-four, blazing fast, left-footed and our scouting staff did a great job to identify him and we really wanted him to come.”