(Football news) With a victory on the second matchday, La Dea is now leading the group and a mere point here will guarantee a direct trip to the round of sixteen. Thanks to their 1-0 victory over Sturm Graz on matchday four, Gian Piero Gasperini’s Atalanta team has already advanced to the knockout stage.

There is still a lot riding on this game for the Italian team, though, as only the group winners advance directly to the round of 16. When the teams met in October, they won 2-1 in Lisbon, therefore only a draw was needed because they would enter the final matchday with a superior head-to-head record and three points ahead.

Atalanta put on an incredible display at the Jose Alvalade, racing to a 2-0 halftime lead where they would have been disappointed not to have gained more.

Though if Gasperini’s team hadn’t given up a lead to 10-man Sturm on matchday three—their lone loss thus far—there could have been less risk in this encounter. Less impressively, Atalanta has only managed one point in their last three games, dropping them to seventh place.

After the team’s weekend loss to Napoli, Gasperini expressed his profound disappointment, saying, “Some incidents prevent us from raising the bar; overall, we play at the same level as teams like Inter Milan, Napoli, and Juventus.” This team truly causes issues for the opposition when it gets over some of its anxieties.”

In this case, the concerns he was alluding to were the catastrophic mistake made late on by goalie Marco Carnesecchi, which allowed Napoli to win in Bergamo.

After losing on matchday two, Sporting has been playing catch-up, so they will be looking to take advantage of any mistakes made by Atalanta today to establish their dominance in the section.

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