Five years ago, a small-town soccer club from Bergamo was struggling to stay in the Serie A, the Italian national league, eventually getting itself into the 17th position. Last year, the Atalanta soccer team clinched the third spot in the final standing and accessed the UEFA Champions League for the second year in a row. The team has indeed managed to expand quickly its horizons, even in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic.

The club took a quantum leap forward when Gian Piero Gasperini got his job as the new trainer in 2016. After a rocky start, the team ended up finishing fourth in Serie A. In the following season, when Atalanta got kicked out of the Europa League at the last minute by German giants Borussia Dortmund, many pundits and sportsmen claimed that the match was the high watermark of Gasperini’s career.