Bologna is strong with the strong

There are still two days to go until the end of the championship, but the Bologna football team is already confident of finishing among the top five positions in Serie A and therefore of qualifying for the next Champions League, the most important European club competition. In its history, Bologna has only played two matches there: it was 1964 and it was still called the Champions League (in the 1990s it was reformed and took the name of the Champions League). It is a quite exceptional result, achieved with an ambitious project carried out by the Italian-Canadian owner Joey Saputo, the head of the technical area Giovanni Sartori (protagonist of Atalanta’s great growth) and above all by coach Thiago Motta.

Motta, a 41-year-old former midfielder of the Italian national team, arrived in September 2022 and in less than two years he made Bologna one of the most entertaining, modern and competitive teams in the championship, after many years in which they had become accustomed to mediocre championships, mostly closed mid-table. In this championship Bologna have put all their opponents in difficulty, especially the strongest ones. They drew 2-2 at San Siro against both Inter and Milan; he won twice in Rome, against Lazio and against Roma, but also in Bergamo against Atalanta and in Naples; drew in Turin against Juventus, a team they will meet next Monday on the penultimate day of Serie A: should they win, Bologna would even secure third place in the championship, just ahead of Juventus (at the moment the two teams are equal on points).

Bologna’s Dutch striker Joshua Zirkzee and coach Thiago Motta (Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)

In the last few days, with the aim of going to the Champions League approaching, Bologna had suffered a decline, drawing some matches against opponents who seemed within reach such as Turin, Udinese, Monza and Frosinone (but in any case without ever losing ). Considering his past and the difficulty in maintaining such a high level throughout the championship, it was perhaps reasonable to expect Bologna’s results to worsen sooner or later. But just when it seemed that it might be affected by the lack of experience of its players in important matches such as those decisive for qualification in the Champions League, Bologna played very well and won the decisive matches with authority against their direct competitors.

After draws against Frosinone and Monza, for example, on 22 April Bologna won 3-1 away from home against Roma, one of the teams with which they were competing for Champions League qualification and among the best in form in the championship. The 2-0 goal from striker Joshua Zirkzee, one of the many youngsters valued by the coach and perhaps the one with the most attention around him, came after thirty-five consecutive passes and shows well the greatest qualities of the team. In Bologna all the players always seem to know what to do and the collective organization stands out more than the qualities of the individual players. Thiago Motta made some changes in every match, and each time he found new and decisive resources: against Roma for example, the first goal was scored by 22-year-old Oussama El Azzouzi, who was just in his third match as a starter in the league.

The way in which it imposed its organised, aggressive and ambitious football in the home stadiums of theoretically better equipped teams, in terms of experience and level of players, demonstrated that Bologna could remain at these levels next year too. Much will depend on what Thiago Motta does, who is a much sought-after coach in Europe and has not yet decided whether to stay at Bologna, and on how the management manages to strengthen the team and retain or replace the best players. Next year, in addition to the championship and the Italian Cup, he will also have to play the Champions League and will therefore have more matches (and more difficult, also because in the Champions League group draws he will be in the last pot).

The match that perhaps best describes Bologna’s exceptional season is the one played on 3 March on the Atalanta pitch, which in recent months has been among the best teams in the league and has played top-level matches in European competitions. Bologna won 2-1 in a comeback (goals from Zirkzee and Scottish midfielder Lewis Ferguson, another fundamental player for Thiago Motta), obtaining their sixth consecutive victory and above all preventing Atalanta from overtaking them in fourth place.

It was a significant moment also because Atalanta is probably the type of team that Bologna could (and probably would like) to become in the coming years: that is, a team that from being a provincial team has acquired notoriety at European and world level, consistently qualifying for competitions international and remaining consistently among the best in the championship with a collective structure capable of enhancing individual players. Atalanta succeeded by relying on Gian Piero Gasperini for many years, while for Bologna it will be difficult to keep Thiago Motta for a long time, because he is young and it seems inevitable that sooner or later he will become the coach of one of the great European teams: confirm it at least for next year, in the first season in the Champions League, however, it would already be very important to make Bologna and its way of playing known at an international level, and to ensure that this year’s season does not remain an exception .

2024-05-13 09:40:20
#Bologna #strong #strong