Cagliari earned a shock 2-1 victory in Bergamo despite having no strikers available, as Gaston Pereiro bagged a brace and got Juan Musso sent off for stunned Atalanta.
The COVID crisis was passing for both clubs, as La Dea only missed Aleksei Miranchuk and Josip Ilicic, with new buys Jeremie Boga and Valentin Mihaila on the bench for the first time, but opted for a 4-2-3-1 formation. The Sardinians had Joao Pedro suspended, Marko Rog, Kevin Strootman, Nahitan Nandez, Leonardo Pavoletti and Sebastian Walukiewicz injured, Gabriele Zappa and Giorgio Altare with COVID and Keita Balde Diao at AFCON.
Luis Muriel dribbled past two to curl just over from the edge of the box, while Matteo Pessina thumped the underside of the crossbar on a Ruslan Malinovskyi through ball, even though he might’ve been marginally offside.
Liveblog: Serie A inc Atalanta-Cagliari, Venezia-Napoli, Juventus-Verona
Alessio Cragno had his gloves well and truly stung by a Malinovskyi left-foot rocket, while after the restart a couple of promising Atalanta moves went begging.
However, Cagliari took the lead with their first genuine attack, as Dalbert’s cross went past Alberto Grassi and found Gaston Pereiro at the back post to control and cushion over the line from a couple of yards. There was a VAR check for potential handball that gave the all-clear.
Moments later, it got even worse for La Dea, as a horrible defensive error sent Pereiro clear on goal and he was brought down just outside the penalty area by Juan Musso for an inevitable red card.
Nonetheless, 10-man Atalanta equalised when Cragno made a sensational one-handed save on Duvan Zapata, but could do nothing on the Jose Luis Palomino headed follow-up.
Just as the hosts were pouring forward to win it, Cagliari struck again on the counter. Raoul Bellanova turned on the afterburners to fly down the right and placed a perfect ball across the face of goal for Gaston Pereiro to cushion in at the far post.
The bad news just kept coming, as Duvan Zapata limped off again only 13 minutes into his comeback and Atalanta failed to further worry Cragno even with eight minutes of stoppages.
Atalanta 1-2 Cagliari
Pereiro 50, 68 (C), Palomino 64 (A)
Sent off: Musso 52 (A)
Its fantastic result what I dreamed about, YES!!!
Atalanta are in trouble.
The start of Atalanta‘s downfall.