Gian Piero Gasperini is “proud” that Atalanta held their nerve to crush Lecce 7-2, but won’t target the Scudetto even in future. “We lose a few too many games.”
It was 2-2 at the break, after La Dea fumbled a 2-0 lead, but eventually ran out 7-2 winners at the Stadio Via del Mare, with Duvan Zapata completing a hat-trick.
Gian Piero Gasperini is “proud” that Atalanta held their nerve to crush Lecce 7-2, but won’t target the Scudetto even in future. “We lose a few too many games.”
It was 2-2 at the break, after La Dea fumbled a 2-0 lead, but eventually ran out 7-2 winners at the Stadio Via del Mare, with Duvan Zapata completing a hat-trick.
“We are proud that we are able to fight back and keep going. When Lecce went from 0-2 to 2-2, we could’ve lost control, but we put the ball back in the centre-circle and continued our usual football,” Gasp told Sky Sport Italia.
“They were some great goals, we created numerous chances, turned it around. Then I can take off Papu Gomez and Josip Ilicic, introduce Ruslan Malinovskyi and Luis Muriel who are eager to show what they can do too.”
Atalanta are flying high going into their next tests against Serie A leaders Lazio and Champions League Round of 16 opponents Valencia, having won the first leg 4-1.
“Undoubtedly, playing games like this boosts confidence. The result became easy in the end, but it wasn’t like that for long periods. Lecce drew with Inter and Juventus here, they were in good form.
“We have an advantage in fourth place, we want to keep it and if anything expand it further, because we want to be back in the Champions League next season.”
Having conceded for 4-1 against Valencia and allowed two for Lecce here, are Atalanta too unbalanced?
“We get a little more distracted when we take the lead. That is a psychological aspect that we are working on, because we seem to get comfortable and assume the job is done when it really is not.
“This keeps happening and we often do pay the price for that. We can’t think of trying to just sit and control a match for an hour, even after going 2-0 up.
“We need to keep going with our usual attitude, whether we are leading or not. Muriel is deadly when we are already in the lead, as on the counter-attack he’s unstoppable.”
Considering Lazio are currently top of the table, could Atalanta make a Scudetto challenge for next season?
“It’s difficult. We lose a few too many matches, perhaps, while our target has been around 70 points and for the Scudetto you need closer to 90. We have raised the bar higher every year, so we’ll keep trying that, but the teams that win the title tend to be more consistent than we are.”