In Bologna comparisons are made…
24-06-2024 18:30
Piece from the zerocinquantuno.it site of Bologna fans
Today you say ‘Atalanta’ and everyone, rightly, takes their hat off. The Bergamo team have earned undisputed credibility thanks to their organisation, football offering, prestigious results and repeated European placings, but perhaps we forget that in 2016-2017 they received the same treatment from most of the media that Bologna receives today. Having achieved a historic qualification for the Champions League after years spent stationed in the lower-middle part of the table, if one listened to those in the know, it seemed that the Goddess would be gutted by the market, incapable and perhaps not even willing to retain its best players. It didn’t quite go that way.
The then Orobic sporting director Giovanni Sartori sold some valuable players (Gagliardini and Kessie above all) to reinvest the earnings, but he also managed to confirm Caldara for another championship and not deprive himself of players like Petagna and Gomez, who at that time had more than an admirer. And Antonio Percassi spoke out in defense of another young talent, Andrea Conti: by rejecting an important offer from Atletico Madrid, the president declared that his Atalanta was ambitious, solid and without any need to sell.
These words cannot help but sound familiar to the ears of the rossoblù fans, who have recently heard them uttered with the same conviction as the CEO. Claudio Fenucci. It is no coincidence, after all: the current Bologna has more than one similarity with Atalanta then on the launching pad. The club is strong, the team structure is nothing short of valid and there is every interest in confirming it as far as possible also next season. Furthermore, the market is managed by that same champion, Sartori.
The Bologna square can choose whether to ruin their days by listening to news about their best players destined for other shores, or live this year zero with the fatalism of those who know that the media take a while to recalibrate their narrative when an unexpected protagonist wins the flip. The exploit of Thiago Motta’s boys was welcomed with surprise, sympathy and even admiration, but the fifth place just obtained has brought BFC back among the greats after twenty years since the last time, and it will take time and results for the club establish itself as a stable and indisputable reality of Italian football.
The conditions for this to happen are all there and should not be found only in the traits that Bologna and Atalanta have in common. A substantial difference between the two paths has already occurred, because if in Bergamo they can count on Gian Piero Gasperini since 2016, the first chapter of European Bologna will be entrusted to a different leader from the one who conquered Europe. Motta has in fact chosen not to continue his adventure under the Two Towers, a lack of continuity which has created more than one discontent in Casteldebole but in front of which the patron Joey Saputo (who, Percassi forbid it, has a different firepower ) and the management were not caught unprepared.
To lead an already competitive team that the Sartori-Di Vaio tandem intends to further strengthen, a young but already internationally experienced profile such as Vincenzo Italiano was chosen. Bologna can and above all wants to continuously establish itself among the seven-eight teams always fighting for a place in Europe, also concretely playing for the Italian Cup. And it matters little if at the moment someone continues to consider it a port from which the most talented elements will set sail. Atalanta has already been through it, it hasn’t been affected by it and this year it even managed to win the first international trophy in its history. The headlines pass by, the ones won swell the bulletin board. And they are the only ones that really matter.
By Staff of Atalantini.com
