Preview: Atalanta coming to town | OneFootball

After winning in the Bundesliga at the weekend, Eintracht welcome Atalanta Bergamasca Calcio to Deutsche Bank Park in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday.

As things stand

“We’re playing at home and we’re expecting the atmosphere to be breathtaking,” said sporting director Timmo Hardung. “It’s an important game but also a tough one. We want to take something from it. We’ll get our chances to do so.”

Matchday 5 of the league phase of the UEFA Champions League brings the Eagles face-to-face with Atalanta BC. They are the second Italian side Dino Toppmöller’s team have met in November, having previously drawn 0-0 at SSC Napoli roughly three weeks ago.

Eintracht go into the encounter on Wednesday 26 November (kick-off 21:00 CET) in 23rd place in the table on four points, while Atalanta are 16th with seven points.

“Everything is still wide open,” said Ansgar Knauff after Saturday’s 4-3 victory in Cologne. “We’ve got our penultimate home game coming up and we’re determined to win it so that we can keep alive our hopes of progressing to the next round. It’s going to be a difficult game and we’ll need to be at our very best if we want to be successful. But we’re playing at home and we know what the atmosphere will be like here at Deutsche Bank Park.”

Looking back

The teams have never met in a competitive fixture before but they have played two recent friendlies. Both ended in 2-2 draws: the first game was a little over nine years ago, while in December 2022 Eintracht won the Trofeo Bortolotti in Bergamo on penalties. 

Patchy campaign

Atalanta suffered a 4-0 defeat in Paris in their opening Champions League fixture this season, and followed it up with a 2-1 win over Club Brugge, a goalless draw against Slavia Praha and, most recently, a 1-0 victory at Olympique de Marseille.

New head coach Raffaele Palladino took over the first-team reins on 11 November and is set to oversee his first-ever game in the Champions League. The 41-year-old Italian’s debut for the club ended in a 3-1 defeat away to Napoli in the Serie A on Saturday, leaving Atalanta 13th in the domestic standings on 13 points, having scored 14 and conceded 14.