Atalanta manager Gian Piero Gasperini has downplayed his team’s chance of winning the Serie A and UEFA Champions League titles this season, Afrosport reports.
The Italian tactician led La Dea to their first-ever European title by winning the Europa League last season, courtesy of Ademola Lookman’s historic hat-trick.
The Bergamo outfit have started the 2024-25 season strongly as they are just three points from the summit of the Serie A log and are just a point shy of automatic qualification spot in the UEFA Champions League where they are yet to concede a goal.
It has led to suggestion that Atalanta have moved up a gear from last season and are prepared to aim for higher honours this term but Gasperini thinks otherwise.
“I respect everyone’s views, but in June my ambition was not so much to sign a long contract as to keep the squad intact after winning the Europa League and qualifying for the Champions League. We did not intend to sign 11 new players, but everyone knows what happened over the summer,” the 66-year-old said per Football Italia.
“If you ask me can we win the Scudetto, I would say no. We can hope to stay in that group if the others wait for us, we are pleased with our progress, but to win the title we’d need to make many more steps forward. I don’t think that’s heresy, nor hiding our light under a bushel,” concluded Gasperini.
“We were close to having a far more competitive squad, but we’ll have to build our way towards it with the club.”
2 – Inter 🇮🇹 and Atalanta 🇮🇹 are the only two teams that haven’t conceded a goal in Champions League in 2024/25. Belpaese.#UCL #InterArsenal #VfBAtalanta pic.twitter.com/BdLcDPZoxc
— OptaPaolo (@OptaPaolo) November 6, 2024
Atalanta is will be in action on Sunday afternoon when they host Udinese at Gewiss Stadium with the hope of temporarily going top of the Serie A log before Inter Milan and Napoli take on each other in the evening.
