Gian Piero Gasperini is unsure whether Alejandro ‘Papu’ Gomez can start for Atalanta against Apollon Limassol in the Europa League tomorrow.
It kicks off at the Mapei Stadium on Thursday at 20.05 UK time (19.05 GMT).
“Rafael Toloi will not play, we’ll see about Papu tomorrow morning,” explained the Coach in his Press conference.
Gian Piero Gasperini is unsure whether Alejandro ‘Papu’ Gomez can start for Atalanta against Apollon Limassol in the Europa League tomorrow.
It kicks off at the Mapei Stadium on Thursday at 20.05 UK time (19.05 GMT).
“Rafael Toloi will not play, we’ll see about Papu tomorrow morning,” explained the Coach in his Press conference.
“It’s not a decisive match, but it is important. When there is a mini-league of just six rounds, it’s a small margin of error. An eventual victory would be a big step forward and any other result leaves it all up in the air.”
The Orobici are surprisingly top of their group after two rounds, having beaten Everton 3-0 and drawn 1-1 away to Olympique Lyonnais.
Apollon Limassol were considered the minnows, but remain unbeaten with two stalemates.
“We’ve seen many of their games and so far this season, they’ve lost just once. They got important results against Lyon and Everton, they know how to defend and counter-attack, so we expect a balanced game.
“We’ll see which tactics we use tomorrow, but we’ve been playing the same way for 15 months and I doubt we’re going to transform everything now. We’ll continue trying to impose our style of football and score more than the opposition.
“Naturally there is more enthusiasm right now in our European games and people travel a long way to follow us in this new adventure.
“It’s tough to make comparisons with last season, but we will try to remain on track in Europe and Serie A. We won’t choose between them and try to do our best in both tournaments.
“I hope to see the same focus and concentration that we showed against Lyon. We’re conceding more goals than last term and it’s something we have to work on, but the performances have been good in a difficult fixture list.
“We step on to the field in order to take the initiative. We know Apollon’s characteristics and the difficulties compared to the other games, but tactically there aren’t issues we’ve never faced before.”