Atalanta won the Europa League

Dublin is not a city for the predestined and for simple and straight destinies. And you don’t need to know the opinion of James Joyce to understand it – he wrote: “Dublin is complicated and destructive of magnificent skills and loving success stories” – it was enough to observe the gaze of Xabi Alonso, the man capable of making unbeatable and successful a Bayer Leverkusen accustomed to missed goals, to Ademola Lookman’s third goal in the Europa League final. He stared into space. Then a huff of disappointment and resignation. It was supposed to be his night, that of Bayer Leverkusen. They had never lost, could they have done so in the final? Especially against a team that had always stopped one step away from consecration? No, they were thinking of Leverkusen, and perhaps most of them too. And yet it happened. Atalanta scored three goals, Bayer Leverkusen zero. Gian Piero Gasperini’s men raised the trophy to the Dublin sky.

Dublin is not a city for the predestined and for simple and straight destinies. You could easily observe it in the eyes of the Atalanta coach, finally happy, ecstatic, a touch incredulous, because after so many missed, lost, aborted opportunities, Gian Piero Gasperini took away the satisfaction of a victory, a European one at that. capable of making up for past disappointments.

All is forgiven, all is overcome. A European cup brings everything back to par, even the rhetorical excesses of television commentators inclined towards national-popular glorification even if they were not on the lists for the European elections.

Atalanta won the Europa League clearly, without discussion or reply, as if it could only happen this way. He won it Ederson-style, for over an hour capable of recovering dozens of balls and unable to miss a pass, so much so that the amazement of the public was felt at the first mistake.

Atalanta won the Europa League and even Gian Piero Gasperini seemed nicer, able to talk about himself and tell what happened to Atalanta, once only good for trophies in Viareggio and now capable of rejoicing in Eurovision.