What a way for Luis Muriel to break his scoring drought in the league: the Cafetero left his first mark in the 2023/24 Serie A season with a stunning back-heel flick to vanquish Milan in the closing minutes – as a further trivia on Muriel’s habits, Lucho came full circle in the most literal way after closing his scoring balance of the last season with a 90+ minute goal after coming off the bench-, After his UEFA Europa League brace against Sturm Graz, Atalanta’s number 9 both raised his tally to 3 nets and became the 10th different black-and-blue goalscorer so far this season.
As highlighted by Stats Perform’s Opta facts, Ademola Lookman has favoured 6 goals (scoring 5 and providing an assist) of Atalanta’s last 9 Serie A nets at the Gewiss Stadium and has hit the target for the second consecutive home fixture in the Italian top-flight – a first since last January when the Nigerian striker extended his run to 4 back-to-back matches. As for the 2023 calendar year, Mola has scored 2+ goals in three Serie A matches, with his previous “victims” being Salernitana and Juventus in the previous campaign: only Victor Osimhen (with five) and Lautaro Martínez (six) can flaunt better figures in the solar year.
Charles De Ketelaere provided his third assist in the league after the Monza and Cagliari: figures show how CDK has a knack for dishing out key passes in home game and a certain chemistry with none other than Lookman himself -having two out of three been delivered to Mola.
Moving on to the stats registered by the official Serie A TIM match-report, while Matteo Ruggeri was the player with the most ball retrievals (9) in the game bar none; De Ketelaere shares the podium of “most-fouled player” with Milan leftback Hernandez (4). As for the three best marksmen of the game, Lookman took the podium with 5 shots in total (3 on target), followed by Giorgio Scalvini and Milan striker Giroud (tied with 4). Not only was Teun Koopmeiners the most “creative” player on the pitch with 4 goal chances created (one more than Lookman with 3); but the Teun-Mola duo flaunts the best stats for key passes (3 each) and most successful passes on the offensive third of the field (namely, 18 for the Dutchman and 17 for the Nigerian).
As a cheerful closing note, 2005s’ midfielder Alberto Manzoni, an Atalanta Academy player ever since 2014, savoured his first feature as a potential First Team sub.
