Atalanta market, from Raffaele Palladino an'admission about his future
Atalanta soccer market: the future in Bergamo of Raffaele Palladino is still in question. Indeed: perhaps even more so after the 0-0 home draw against Genoa, representing the second point in the last four Serie A matches, while the Coppa Italia final faded in a disastrous penalty shoot-out against Lazio after the Nerazzurri’s Champions League adventure had ended with their heads down. And the Campania coach admitted that his permanence will be decided only after an end-of-season summit with the Orbico club.
“Yes, I feel under scrutiny,” Palladino revealed to ‘Sky Sport,’ responding to specific question. “We all are at Atalanta, and we all have to give something more. I would not throw away what good we have done in these months, also because this is a group that has been working together for many years. They have given a lot, won a lot and proven their great value. At the end of the championship I will meet with the club, we will discuss and together we will evaluate what to do.”
“I am seeing many matches, the fact that at this stage there is physical and mental fatigue is physiological. But Atalanta was 13th and now they are seventh,” Palladino stressed.
“We undeservedly exited the Coppa Italia in the semifinals, in the Champions League we had a great run reaching the round of 16. I think the team’s performances have always been good, apart from the initial half-hour in Cagliari that we missed.”
On the tactical level, against Genoa Palladino had tried to shake up the team with some brave choices, proposing from the first minute the offensive tandem Scamacca-Krstovic with De Ketelaere in the role of trequartista and Zalewski employed on the left flank. An experiment that did not, however, have the desired effects: before the hour of play, the coach was forced to recall Scamacca, throwing Raspadori into the fray and returning to the more proven usual scheme. The most inspired of the evening was indeed the former Napoli man, who just over ten minutes from the 90th minute hit a resounding crossbar with a broadside from the edge.
The Dea’s black moment has its roots in the previous weeks. The most stinging defeat, in terms of morale, had come on the field of Cagliari, where the Bergamasks had been remounted and mocked by the double of Paul Mendy, the Sardinians’ 2007-class striker, capable of stamping twice in just nine minutes and completely overturning the inertia of the match. It was an evening to forget that had already set off more than one alarm bell in the Nerazzurri’s house, even before the subsequent defeats against Roma and Juventus.
On the market front, meanwhile, the summer session is approaching and with it some thorny issues to be resolved at Atalanta. One concerns Sead Kolasinac: the veteran Bosnian defender, according to rumors circulating in recent weeks, would not seem to be part of Palladino’s future plans and could leave Bergamo on a zero-parameter basis as of July. Gianluca Petrachi’s Torino, looking for reinforcements in defense for next season, would already have their eyes on his profile.
Well different is the discourse related to Honest Ahanor, one of the few elements on which the orobic club is betting decisively for the future. The young defender born in 2008, who arrived from Genoa last summer for about 18 million euros, has impressed for quality and ductility enough to attract the attentions of Real Madrid, which has reportedly already sent its scouts to monitor him. After obtaining Italian citizenship and making his debut with the national Under-21 team, his valuation has skyrocketed to over 30 million euros: an asset that Atalanta is unlikely to want to discount, regardless of who sits on the Nerazzurri bench next season.
