Atalanta: Dark horses to win the Champions League - The Warm-Up
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Updated 29/07/2020 at 08:48 GMT
Look, it’s early on a Wednesday morning and we’ve all already formed our opinions on whether Manchester City are innocent or guilty, so let’s swerve another court case and look elsewhere...
Atalanta celebrate
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WEDNESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Atalanta can topple European giants
Imagine a team that is unbeaten since January, have scored 62 goals in the 20 games since then, whose fancied quarter-final opponents in the Champions League just played their first competitive match in four months – losing their best player in the process. You would back them to cause a stir, right?
Quit imagining. It’s real. This is the Atalanta story.
Their late 2-1 win over Parma on Tuesday evening left them two shy of 100 goals in Serie A this season. Two more in their final game against Inter Milan and they will become the first side to hit triple figures since 1951. But there’s a far bigger carota on the horizon.
Atalanta meet PSG in a one-off match in neutral Lisbon on August 12. Despite the seesaw of wealth and talent cemented down in Paris, it is inconceivable that they could contain a free-scoring side with almost no preparation. And without Kylian Mbappe. We’ve already seen how much the tempo suffers after a three-month break. PSG have had an even longer sabbatical; Atalanta are in full flow.
Should the Italians win that clash (they will), Werner-less RB Leipzig or nearly-men Atletico Madrid await in the semi-finals. Given Atalanta last failed to score in November, they will be quite happy breaking down two of Europe’s meanest defences. And then it’s a final… anything can happen.
Tears for Bournemouth
When the Warm-Up was a little child, happily playing youth football on wonky pitches, we were always told one thing: 'if you’re blaming the referee, you didn’t play well enough'.
Which is why we have little sympathy for Bournemouth, who are contemplating a legal challenge after missing out on Premier League survival by a single point. That point, they argue, would be unnecessary had Hawkeye not failed to spot Orjan Nyland back-peddling into his own net during Aston Villa’s 0-0 draw with Sheffield United. Villa, you guessed it, stayed up by a point.
However, it assumes that every other event would have stayed exactly the same had the goal been awarded. That’s ridiculous. In the alternative reality where goalline technology did work, Bournemouth still would have found a way to go down. Just look at their form since the restart: LLLLDWLLW.
Relegation deserved.
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Kai Havertz makes Chelsea wait as €90m transfer sits in limbo – Euro Papers
IN OTHER NEWS
Why we didn't touch the Manchester City story, illustrated in a tweet:
Although someone else did a good job...
HAT-TIP
As long ago as 2012-13 it seems Man City had the most lucrative principle sponsorship deal IN WORLD FOOTBALL (with Etihad); £220m over three years 12-13, 13-14, 15-16. So Etihad had an original 10-year, £350m deal with City, valid through to 2021. But choose to negotiate it upwards FOUR times between 2013 and 2016. That is an interesting strategy; they must have felt rivals were waiting to pounce and outbid them.
Normally we direct you to some fancy article, but today we're pushing a glorious Twitter thread from Nick Harris, who salutes Manchester City's heroic commercial team...
IN THE CHANNELS
Just pretend basketball is football for a second and feel the burn...
RETRO CORNER
With apologies to tomorrow's Warm-Up writer, we're jumping the gun by a day and revisiting England's first (and probably only) World Cup win. Turns out nothing has ever happened on July 29.
COMING UP
Will Brentford stop bottling their promotion push? Tonight's their last chance to get it right as they aim to overturn a 1-0 deficit in their Championship play-off semi-final with Swansea. Oh, and there's lots of Serie A too.
Andi Thomas has actual football to talk about tomorrow, lucky boy.
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