Milan (AFP)
Atalanta Yemen will maintain its historical lead in the Italian Football League, when it hosts Cremonese, the penultimate position, “Sunday” in the sixth stage.
Atalanta found itself at the top in the fifth stage by defeating Montaza 2-0 and losing its former partner Roma to Udinese 0-4, raising its score to 13 points from four victories and one draw, two points ahead of its direct pursuers Napoli and AC Milan, the defending champion.
It is the first time that Atalanta has topped the league table alone since 1964, and coach Gian Piero Gasperini commented: “Never in the long history of Atalanta has it been alone at the top, it is a beautiful thing for players and fans.
“The fans can enjoy it but we know we still have work to do,” he added.
Atalanta appears to be an extraordinary candidate to enhance its lead, given the modest level of its newly arrived guest, Cremonese, in the top flight, who earned only one point in his first five matches.
Unlike the rest of the league’s contenders, Atalanta has no European commitments, having finished last season in a disappointing eighth position, and this gives it a huge advantage ahead of the World Cup in Qatar, with intense domestic and continental commitments on a very tight schedule before the global wedding kicks off in November 20.
Atalanta will likely find itself in third place before its match against Cremonese because its rivals Napoli and Milan open the “Saturday” stage with two relatively easy matches, the first against its 14th guest Spezia, and the second against its 18th host, Sampdoria.
Napoli enters the match against Spezia in high spirits, after its great victory over its guest, Liverpool, 4-1 in the first round of the group stage of the Champions League.
Luciano Spalletti’s team re-emerged as title contenders after a turbulent summer that made it look like a club in deep crisis, with the departures of stars “Lorenzo Insigne, Belgian Dries Mertens, Spaniard Fabian Ruiz and Senegalese Kalido Koulibaly”, and fans begging owner Aurelio De Laurentiis to sell the club.
But the newcomers, especially Georgian Khvisha Kvaratskhelia and South Korean Kim Min-jae, had a great impact on the wonderful performances of the southern club in the new season and gave hope to the fans in the club’s ability to crown the third title in its history and the first since the days of Argentine legend Diego Armando Maradona (1986-1987 and 1989- 1990».
For his part, Milan issued a stern warning to its rivals about its readiness to defend its title when it decided the “Derby of Rage” against rivals and neighbor Inter 3-2 at the end of last week.
Milan hopes to take advantage of the shaky morale of the Sampdoria players, who have not won any victory so far and scored only two goals in their offensive line.
Saturday also plays Inter, the eighth and runner-up of last season, with its sixth guest, Torino.
Inter is four points behind Atalanta, as it seeks to erase its two losses against its neighbor Milan and its guest, Bayern Munich, 0-2 at the beginning of his career in the group stage of the prestigious continental competition.
Juventus is not much different from Inter, as it aspires to heal the wounds of the 1-2 loss against its French host Paris Saint-Germain in the first round of the Champions League group stage, and improve its results in Calcio, where it achieved only two wins against three draws.
Juventus, one of 4 teams that have not lost so far in the league, along with Atalanta, Napoli and Milan, is playing a relatively easy match against its tenth guest, Salernitana, on Sunday.
In the rest of the matches, Lecce plays with Montaza, Sassuolo with Udinese, Bologna with Fiorentina, and Lazio with Verona, with the stage ending on Monday with Empoli’s meeting with Roma, which fell Thursday against its Bulgarian host Ludogorets in the round of the European League “Europa League”.