Atalanta coach Gian Piero Gasperini praised Ruslan Malinovskyi and Aleksei Miranchuk for retaining their friendship throughout the war in Ukraine, but went on another rant about refereeing decisions in Serie A.

Ukraine international Malinovskyi scored in this evening’s 3-2 Europa League victory over Bayer Leverkusen and celebrated by removing a black armband he wore as a sign of mourning, kissing it and pointing to the sky.

In a tweet afterwards, he confirmed this goal was ‘dedicated to all the victims of the war in Ukraine.’

“He and his family are going through something. We spend a lot of our time as a squad watching the news. This has shaken us up perhaps even more than COVID, and that hit Bergamo hard,” confessed Gasperini to Sky Sport Italia.

A beautiful flag in the stands was also outside the Atalanta training ground this week, depicting Ukrainian Malinovskyi and his Russian teammate Miranchuk shaking hands.

“Clearly, he has family and friends still there. We are also close to Miranchuk. It’s an extraordinary friendship they have, Miranchuk feels almost embarrassed by the situation. People matter more than flags and borders, this is a good lad and he deserves respect too.”

Gasperini had avoided speaking to the media for several weeks after Serie A games, because he was furious with some of the refereeing decisions that went against his club.

Now that he had to make this mandated interview, the coach was asked what he felt had gone wrong.

“For five or six games in a row we had goals given, not given, penalties given and taken away, along with admittedly some performances that weren’t up to our usual standards. They were against Inter, Juventus, Roma, Fiorentina twice, we had several players missing due to COVID and hardly any strikers available, so they were tough games.

“We played with absolute respect for our opponents and did not see the same respect towards us. What disappoints me the most is that some incidents were just cancelled and ignored.

“If you ask me, what was done to Atalanta was extremely damaging and if you want to go back and look at those incidents, you can.”

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