Gómez and Atalanta: the background of the break with Gasperini

This story of growing tensions, with a parable opposite to Atalanta’s, does not begin on the night of December 1, Atalanta-Midtyjlland: it begins much earlier. At the beginning of October, when Gómez returns to the Argentine group after three years: extraordinary and well-deserved gratification, which opens the player to the prospect of playing a great event like the next Copa América; but also a radical change in his athletic and physical management. And just in the season of matches every three days and for three months. The Papu does not stay to work specifically in Zingonia, as always during the championship stops, which he usually uses to refuel. Which then allows Gasperini, although the two are not all roses, to make him play almost always. It is up to him to play well: not always, but very often. On the other hand, in the space of 40 days Gómez makes two transoceanic flights and trains (in a different way) to the other side of the world for a total of almost twenty days. He too, like Zapata for example, is affected. And the energies to play as a full-fledged player, as he likes now, are not the same in Gasperini’s opinion.

Physical contact

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Papu fights more on the field, but Atalanta suffers more: the coach does not decide to keep him on the bench but to overtake him, again closer to the area, with less freedom of movement but also with less energy expenditure. Gómez is not enthusiastic and the latent divergence of tactical points of view between the two, who does not find a point of contact, overflows towards the end of the first half of the Champions League match with the Danes: an indication from Gasp is rejected in twice by Papu and explicitly rejected the third, before “giving up” to accept it. Ten minutes later, in the dressing room, the beginning of the end: with very close mutual encounters, and not just verbal ones. The much commented physical contact, more than words, makes the fight irremediable: two days later in Zingonia he is treated, not treated, by a direct intervention of President Antonio Percassi. It does not serve to encourage a conciliatory meeting between the two, but to make it clear that no other behavior “other than Atalanta’s” will be allowed. Especially because on the horizon is the “inside or outside the Champions League” against Ajax. What does Gómez play after being excluded from the Udinese-Atalanta qualifying call and before watching Atalanta-Fiorentina for 90 minutes the day before yesterday.

The charge

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Perhaps a bank was expected, but it is not easy to metabolize. Like the anxiety of writing the lines of that post, giving rise to the suspicion that his management of moments and actions is not always up to the extraordinary performance he has in the field: the impression is that he was also the captatio benevolentiae of a player who knows the mood of the Bergamo fans and who has chosen to live in Bergamo if he does not change his mind. An exit that, meditated or not, now leaves a curiosity: to know what Gómez will have to say, once he leaves. So much has already been said about this story, and with so many “contributions”, that it is intriguing to try to understand what is new that remains to be learned.