BERGAMO, Italy — Atalanta
cruised past Sampdoria 4-0 on Monday to keep pace with
Juventus in Serie A's
race for the Champions League.
اضافة اعلان
Mario Pasalic's early strike, goals
in each half from
Teun Koopmeiners and Aleksei Miranchuk's late finish ensured
that Atalanta stayed three points behind Juve, who sit in fourth after their
win at Empoli on Saturday.
Gian Piero Gasperini's side have a
game in hand which if they win would move them above Juve thanks to their
superior head-to-head record.
A typically attack-minded display at
the Gewiss Stadium gave Atalanta just their second win from eight Serie A games
played since the turn of the year, ending a run of five league matches without
victory.
It was also their first league home
win since the end of November, their fourth in Bergamo all season.
Pasalic opened the scoring in the
sixth minute with a powerful header which completely wrong-footed Wladimiro
Falcone in the Samp goal.
The Croatia international netted his
ninth league goal of the season after replacing Ruslan Malinovskyi just before
kick-off.
Malinovskyi, who had recently spoken
out against the Russian invasion of his home country Ukraine, was due to start
but picked up a calf injury in the pre-match warm up.
The 24-year-old was pictured
chatting on the sidelines with his compatriot Vladyslav Supryaha, who is on
loan at Samp from
Dynamo Kyiv.
"We can see that Ruslan is
having some trouble at the moment... we're trying to help him but it's
difficult," said Marten de Roon to DAZN.
Koopmeiners added the second just
before the half-hour mark when he slotted home a calm finish from Matteo
Pessina's pass.
And after Francesco Caputo missed
two good chances to put Samp back in the game and had a goal ruled out for
offside Netherlands midfielder Koopmeiners made sure of the points for Atalanta
in the 61st minute.
The 24-year-old was set up by
Russian Miranchuk, who barely celebrated after rounding off the scoring with a
superb individual goal with four minutes remaining.
Midfielder Miranchuk almost looked
sheepish after dribbling around three players before cutting a lovely shot back
across Falcone to end a near-perfect evening for Atalanta.
He is a close friend of Malinovskyi
and was surrounded by supportive teammates after netting his second Serie A
goal of the season.
"Miranchuk is a great
teammate," added De Roon. "They (he and Malinovskyi) always talk to
each other, there is nothing but friendship between those two."
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