Atalanta were caught out by an early Olympiacos goal, but poured forward for the rest of the match, winning 2-1 thanks to a quick-fire Berat Djimsiti brace in this Europa League Play-Off.
This was the first leg of a new fixture introduced by UEFA between the teams who finished third in their Champions League groups and second in the Europa League, for access to the Europa League Round of 16.
La Dea were on dire recent form, crashing out of the Coppa Italia and struggling in Serie A. Duvan Zapata, Aleksei Miranchuk, Josip Ilicic and Jose Luis Palomino were out of action, while Olympiacos had three former Serie A players in the side, including ex-Napoli defender Kostas Manolas, who only made the move in January.
Europa League Liveblog: Barcelona-Napoli, Porto-Lazio, Atalanta-Olympiacos
Luis Muriel steered wide off the inside of the boot from 12 yards, then Rafael Toloi couldn’t quite get on the end of a flicked-on corner from close range.
Instead, Olympiacos took the lead against the run of play with a bit of luck. Tiquinho Soares slipped as he took the shot from distance, which gave it an extra bend to go around Juan Musso’s fingertips into the far bottom corner.
Muriel gave the ball away so cheaply, fortunate that Henry Onyekuru scuffed the finish wide after that gift on the edge of the penalty area.
Nobody could meet the excellent Ruslan Malinovskyi pull-back and Mario Pasalic had several headers that flashed just off target.
Atalanta did have the ball in the net with Matteo Pessina after a heavy Muriel first touch, but he was narrowly offside.
Jeremie Boga and Teun Koopmeiners were thrown on and the ex-Sassuolo man made an immediate impact, his curler forcing a save at the far bottom corner after skipping past three defenders.
Malinovskyi’s ferocious free kick from a tricky angle was palmed out from under the bar by the Olympiacos goalkeeper.
It was a siege in the second half, Kostas Manolas with a decisive header to prevent a Pasalic tap-in, then on the resulting Malinovskyi corner, Berat Djimsiti’s glancing header went into the far top corner for the equaliser.
Barely two minutes later, Atalanta turned it around in similar fashion. It was a Koopmeiners corner this time, but Djimsiti was quickest to react on the loose ball and volley in from seven yards. The defender had just four goals in 130 games for Atalanta before getting two in as many minutes.
Atalanta 2-1 Olympiacos
Soares 16 (O), Djimsiti 61, 63 (A)
Hopefully Atalanta go all out to win this competition, because they’re probably Serie A’s only slim hope of a European trophy this season.
Muriel has been pretty bad the couple last games. Atalanta is missing Zapata a lot.
To ferban: I agree, they need to take their Champions League spot from here!