On paper, it looked like a game Atalanta should win. They had been rounding into form since the start of 2023, piling up goals and muscling their way back into the fight for Champions League places. Last weekend, a 2-0 win at Lazio leapfrogged them into fourth, so Sunday’s fixture at home to 13th-placed Lecce should have been straightforward by comparison.
Football matches, however, are not played on paper. Nor, as the Lecce manager, Marco Baroni, reminded us recently, are they played on a video game console. “There are some PlayStation maestros out there who think our system of play doesn’t work,” he said after a 2-0 win at last-placed Cremonese this month. “They’re wrong.”
