MARSEILLE – Nowadays historical events follow one another like the blooming of flowers in spring, that of the past of course. Here, then, is Atalanta facing Olympique Marseille, a club rich in transalpine but also European glory: it is the only French team to have won the Champions League, the other greats of French football, Paris S. Germain, Lyon and Monaco they tremble with envy. Atalanta presents itself at the Vélodrome, which will be stoked with fire, with the intention of continuing the journey towards an ever closer goal and comforting its people, those arriving and those anxiously waiting in Bergamo, with yet another historic performance that is a prologue to a positive result. If you play well, you often win too. Although it is not a specific axiom of the game of football. Rivers of words and just as many statements of various media types have been written about the difficulty of facing the OM in its home, a stronghold. Atalanta, however, has achieved a good number of impossible feats, in fact it has entered the history of European football and has no intention of giving up in the land of Provence. It will be a challenge in no uncertain terms but always in the field of football with Gasset’s team, the seventy-year-old coach who revitalized Veretout and his teammates, looking for a result to give a specific tone to a troubled season with the change of three coaches, first Marcelino, then Gattuso and now the former globetrotting coach, especially Africa. Therefore it is a comparison that leaves no doubt for anyone. It is no coincidence that “La Provence”, the Marseille newspaper, had the headline: “OM, the most anticipated match of the season” just to clarify the atmosphere of the evening. Gasset deploys a 3-5-2, pay attention to Aubameyang in attack. Atalanta, for its part, presents itself without fears or tremors but with the awareness of its strength increased by the results in Europe, in the championship and in the Italian Cup. A particular “treble” is taking shape for the Nerazzurri. Gasperini, on more than one occasion during the press conference, repeated the word courage. Virtue that is part of the Nerazzurri’s baggage. There are no particular doubts about the team that will take the field: practically the same one that played at Anfield with Kolasinac, former player, in place of Hien, who was suspended but, obviously, in a different position on the pitch. And Marseille, understood as a city. Here is the definition of its greatest writer, Jean-Claude Izzo: “Marseille is not a city for tourists. There is nothing to see. Its beauty cannot be photographed. It is shared. Here, we need to take sides. Be passionate. Being for, being against. Being, violently…. In Marseille, even to lose you have to know how to fight.” And he added: “Paris is an attraction, Marseille is a passport”.
James Mayer
