After their Europa League endeavours against Sturm Graz, Atalanta are off to Udine to hit the Serie A pitches in a challenging road game.
When did our undefeated streak in Udine first start?
Just like this year, last season’s match saw the Nerazzurri hit Udinese’s pitch in a Sunday kick-off at 15:00 CET: while Atalanta took the lead and doubled it with Lookman‘s opener and Muriel‘s goal from the penalty spot, Udinese eventually came back and levelled the score with goals from Perez and Deulofeu. In January 2022, Atalanta clinched a 2-6 walkover, to be discussed more in-depth in the following chapter. As for the previous season’s Udinese v Atalanta, originally scheduled for Sunday, December 6 but ultimately postponed to January 20 2021 because of a waterlogged pitch, while Udinese took an early lead with Pereyra, Muriel scored the equaliser. Being a strenuous enforcer of the infamous “ex’s law”, Muriel has time and again scored against his former team: namely, with another brace in the summer match of 2020, which culminated in Aralanta’s 2-3 win, with Zapata being the other scorer. Lastly, it is the turn of Atalanta’s 1-3 win back in December 2018, bearing Duván Zapata‘s triple signature. To sum it all up, Atalanta are currently on an ongoing streak of 5 consecutive positive outcomes at the Bluenergy Stadium.
Who did not score in Atalanta’s 2-6 win over Udinese?
A walkover dating back to the 2021/22 season. On 17 minutes, Pašalić broke the deadlock nodding in Pezzella’s cross with a great header; the Nerazzurri doubled their lead 22 minutes into the game as Muriel went solo to score a true stunner. Spoiler alert, it won’t be the only banger of the game to bear the Cafetero‘s signature. Going in order, Malinovskyi made it 0-3 with one of his trademark goals, unleashing one of his rocket strikes to close the first half with a bang. While Molina pulled one away to half the hosts’ deficit on 59 minutes, Muriel hogged the spotlight once again and made it 1-4 with nothing but a classy finish. Despite Udinese’s goal with Beto, both Mæhle and Pessina found their scoring debuts in the closing minutes to seal the 2-6 walkover.
How many former Udinese players feature in Atalanta’s roster?
Before donning the black-and-blue colours, Juan Musso took up residence between Udinese’s three sticks for three seasons (between the 2018/19 and the 2020/21 campaigns), collecting a tally of 104 appearances and 29 clean sheets. The other former Udinese player is Luis Muriel, who first landed in Italy thanks to Udinese, who signed the striker from Deportivo Cali in the summer of 2010. After his loan spells in Granada and Lecce, Lucho flew back to base in Udine, where he spent the following two and a half seasons (from the summer of 2012 to January 2015) collecting 65 appearances and scoring 19 goals.
