Atalanta have continued to deliver in this season’s Serie A. Gian Piero Gasperini has
followed up last season’s third place finish by guiding the Bergamo-based club to fourth
place so far, with Champions League football yet again on the horizon.
Atalanta are probably Serie A’s most tactically complex side. For all the consistency of their
3-4-1-2 or 3-4-2-1 set-ups, they run myriad variations of plays within them.
Gasperini’s acumen has seen the front players especially excel: attacking midfielder Papu
Gomez, and forwards Luis Muriel, Duvan Zapata, and The Athletic’s Serie A Player of the
Season, Josep Ilicic, have scored 45 league goals between them.
They’ve combined to make Atalanta the highest scoring team in the league and the third highest
overall in Europe’s top five leagues. Atalanta have scored 10 goals more than the next most
prolific Italian side, Lazio. Atalanta take a lot of shot per game, too,
more than any other side in the league, but they’ve developed a style that allows them
consistently to work the ball into dangerous positions. Shot volume counts for little if
the shots are of poor quality.
Gasperini’s team look to attack the wide areas and half spaces, generating overloads
through combination play involving defence, midfield, and attack. They play least through
the centre, where Gomez has something of a free role.
We’ll break down some of the more usual attacking patterns of play, but this is a
team with a lot of variations and players who can respond to situations creatively.
This is part of their danger – it’s possible to understand how Atalanta play, but players
like Gomez and Ilicic add a degree of spontaneity and improvisation that makes them very hard
to stop.
Atalanta’s standard 3-4-1-2 naturally lends their approach play width. The wing backs,
Robin Gosens on the left and Hans Hateboer on the right, offer this naturally, while
both central midfielders drift out to support this and one of the forwards will also pull
wide towards the side where the ball is. This means Atalanta can have four or five players
occupying wide areas. But they also maintain their width irrespective of which side of
the pitch the ball is on – this allows for switches in play through the uncongested centre
and causes opposition defences problems as they try to adjust.
While the creative players naturally get the plaudits, the system functions well because
Atalanta have a number of extremely hard-working, tactically intelligent midfielders, players
like Marten de Roon, Remo Freuler, and Mario Pasalic. These players glue the elements of
Atalanta’s transitional play together, shifting their position in relation to the movements
of the wing backs and forwards, to ensure that there are always passing options.
If the side are looking to retain possession and build from the back, a midfielder will
drop into space in the channel and add a passing point. This allows the wider centre back to
push forwards to cover the advancing wing back. If the wide centre back carries the
ball forwards, the central midfielder may stay in position and allow the side to retain
its defensive shape. The central midfielders will push up and wider,
though, if the centre backs hold their position. And if a centre forward drops off to link
play, it’s not uncommon to see the central midfielder push beyond them, especially Pasalic.
This ensures that Atalanta can have a rough 3-2-5 shape in possession irrespective of
which players are actually the ones who push forwards. It demands a lot of the midfield,
filling in or connecting play or making runs, depending on what else is happening on the
pitch. Outside them, the wing backs do mostly stay
wide, but will cut infield and offer an option in the half space, especially if the forwards
are pulling wide to make space for a run from midfield.
And even the centre backs, usually Berat Djimisti, Jose Luis Palomino, and Rafael Toloi ,are
involved in this desire to overload the wide and half spaces. They will carry the ball
forwards or make runs into attacking positions, covered by the midfield, especially if room
is created by a forward pulling wide. They also space very wide across the back
line, so that the wing backs and wide centre backs may occupy the same horizontal space,
covered by a midfielder dropping in. This means that it’s easy to generate overloads
and stretch the opposition defence into wide areas, leaving gaps elsewhere. The position-switching
movement of the other midfielders and forwards then pulls the opposition defence in various
directions, meaning that Atalanta either create space for players in dangerous positions,
or make room for runs that penetrate the opposition box.
All these rotations and movements serve to create space for the front two and Gomez,
who is often the only player genuinely central apart from the central centre back and goalkeeper.
In a fascinating interview with El Pais, Gomez explains that the referee is often his point
of reference: “Who’s best placed in the whole field? The referee. He’s always alone.”
Gomez’s role is to find this space. He stitches play together, dropping deep to collect the
ball and shift it wide, pushing up into the half spaces to act as the free man or create
a passing triangle, or arriving late to exploit the space created by others to shoot or assist.
The forwards, Zapata and Ilicic, do roam to a degree, but they will also spend time in
the wide channels, creating space for runs from deep. Both forwards and Gomez will also
drive forwards, play quick one-twos and switch the angle of attack from the half space into
the centre quickly. And Atalanta’s retention of width means that if, for example, the left
side is attacked and then the ball is played across the centre, a player is often able
to enter the box unmarked on the right-hand side and score. Atalanta’s quick exchanges
in the box are part of the reason that they have almost 100 more touches in the box this
season than the next best team, Napoli [697 to 603, according to Wyscout].
For all Atalanta’s undoubted brilliance in attack from open play, they also possess
good set pieces takers, especially Ilicic, and Zapata is excellent in the air. Only Roma
have scored as many as Atalanta from set pieces in the league, 11. While their attacking metrics,
like progressive or key passes, are all excellent, and they’re the fourth best team for possession
and passes per minute, they’re defensively sound too. This is partly because they see
so much of the ball, and partly because their ability to transition makes teams wary of
committing too much to attacks – although they are certainly more vulnerable to teams
who match their three at the back set-up. But no team has conceded fewer shots against
than Atalanta, while they’re third for interceptions and for PPDA (Passes Allowed per Defensive
Action), the measure that shows how much sides press.
Atalanta are a superb team, full of talented players, many of whom are performing beyond
what might previously have been expected of them. Tenacious and resilient in defence,
full of purpose and intelligence in attack, Atalanta under Gasperini are showing that
an innovative tactical approach can deliver.