Atalanta Bergamo is something of a goal machine of the Serie A. In season 2019/20, the Team of coach Gian Piero Gasperini 98 goals scored. Series Champions Juventus Turin to Superstar Cristiano Ronaldo came on 75. Already in the year before that Atalanta had won the title of the collective top scorer. Also for the second Time in the series, Atalanta is qualified as the third of A series directly for the Champions League. Already at the debut in the Premier class in Bergamo, managed to jump among the top eight. Atalanta is the only Italian club in the Lisbon final of the tournament. Champions Juve and Napoli had failed in the second round. This Wednesday evening (21.00 in F. A. Z.-Liveticker zur Champions League and DAZN) calls the surprise team from Lombardy in the first quarter-final meeting with Paris Saint-Germain to Superstar Neymar out.

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Matthias Rüb

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta, based in Rome.

F. A. Z.

As a coach, Gasperini on Monday the squad for the most important game in the history of the club from Atalanta announced, was the Name of Josip Ili?i?. Has surprised nobody, though the 32-year-old Slovenian striker is something of a never-ending fuel in Bergamo’s goal machine. In the current season, the best of his career, in all competitions 21 goals, and he delivered nine templates. In the eighth finals of the Champions League in Valencia, from 10. March scored Ili?i? all four goals in 4:3. With this art piece Ili?i? joined a pretty exclusive club: Four goals in a game in the knockout Phase of the Champions League were a success, until then, only Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski and Mario Gomez, however, in each case in the home games, not away like Ili?i?.

However, Josip Ili?i? is not a Superstar. You could even say: on the contrary. Why is he missing at the final tournament in Lisbon, whether he will ever return in the squad – there’s all sorts of speculation, but no evidence. It is certain only that he is staying for some time in Slovenia in the case of mother, Ana, and brother, Igor, with the consent of coach Gasperini and the governance of the club. Certainly not is that Josip Ili?i? in the process of training yet can play because he is injured – not physically, but mentally.

The “grandma” of the team

In the cabin and on the training ground Ili?i? is the rest of the team “nonna” (grandma) called. It is said that his nickname triple it is due to the fact that he often thought, Yes, full of worry look. As a grandmother in the midst of a scrappy Grandchildren. The time of the lock downs at the beginning of March until mid-may, spent Ili?i?, like all his team-mates of Atalanta in Bergamo. The city with about 120,000 residents should lock soon after the imposition of the national output of 9. March to the so-called epicenter of the pandemic in Italy.

In the “Wuhan Europe” so many people died in relation to the number of inhabitants Covid-19 as in any other city. During the public life came to a Standstill, were heard day and night the sirens of the ambulances. And as in the morgue and in the chapel of the Central cemetery and the coffins piled up because the crematorium was hopelessly overloaded, were made the coffins of the Italian army for cremation in neighboring provinces and regions. The “truck of Bergamo” became the symbol for the horrors of Sars-CoV-2.

the illness of Josip Ili?i? Is a consequence of Corona-trauma? The Ball of the game from Valencia to him after his election as “Man of the Match” handed over, donated Ili?i? immediately to the Hospital “Pope John XXIII” in Bergamo, where Doctors and nurses in intensive care to the lives of Dozens of Covid-19-Sick struggled. “We are on your side, your angel, to win the most important game of all,” let Ili?i? on the Homepage of Atalanta to tell. But it may also be that the cause of the acute depressive nudge deeper look into the life story of Josip Ili?i? to.