Topic: Italian League Prediction Thread (Serie A) - page 3686. (Read 866521 times)

There are clubs like Atalanta and Chelsea that are working like factories. Loan legions I'd call that.

For example, if I'm no mistaken, in 2016. or 2015. Parma had more then 150 players on loan at the same time in only one season. Chelsea has been like that for more then 10 years and Atalanta is doing the same thing.

They buy tons of very young players for low fees, loan out a legion of young players where clubs that loaned them out pay their wages. Player are on loans until they either become good enough to get in the main team or reach profitable value and sold.

You have players in Chelsea that are officially veterans in Chelsea and yet they haven't played a single match for Chelsea.  Now more and more clubs are taking this approach.

I would call that highly unethical, if you put yourself in the shoes of a young player. You get loaned for half a season in one club in England, then you move for a year into another club in England, then you get loaned for another year in Spain and so on...

It is a meat grinder and no matter how talented you are this can only be survived by extremely adaptable personalities, but there must be consequences nonetheless for a 17 year old moving like that.

You will see in the coming years this topic will become the number one issue in modern football and there will be restrictions on the way when it comes to this type of "managing" young players.

This looks like handling cattle from my perspective.

Call me crazy but Atalanta in this Champions with only 1 game for a turn can be a nightmare for anyone.
Will they keep this strength for one more month?

Can they win the Champions if they continue like this?

Atalanta is on their journey to become bigger and bigger, another Dortmund or Tottenham. If they will be able to maintain their good forms like that next one or 2 seasons, they will become a big team. Life is never easy like that, even big teams get troubles in some seasons, Manchester United, Tottenham, Dortmund, and Atletico Madrid. It is so interesting to see Atalanta is growing stronger and fastly like that. I think Atalanta has their good forms to get a spot in Champions League again.

Another team is Leipzig in Bundesliga but Atalanta at least has gone one season ahead of Leipzig.

There are tons of teams like Atalanta in the world right now, with the financial fair play rules a lot of teams turned inwards and trying to find young players that would both play and make a good amount of impact on the field but also later sold for a higher price. However not every team makes it as well as Atalanta, look at ajax for example, they are known to be scout of the world and they do end up finding amazing players all the time from a very young age and went very far ahead in the champions league as well.

So, I would say that Atalanta is very good at what they do, what they do is something thousands of teams try in all over the world but they keep failing at it, Atalanta didn't fail and they managed to make it work and now they are very good thanks to it.

 Calhanoglu played the "number 10" role for almost all of his career but that position is actually getting less and less in the game. Usually there was always a guy behind the striker, that wasn't really a midfield because he wasn't helping defense at all as well, but also wasn't striker itself, it was "number 10" because usually players who played at that position was wearing that jersey number. What we call in football manager AMC, however AMC still exists, just not that way.

 Right now instead of that, we have players like firminho who are more like shadow strikers, who are more offensive and more attacking and almost always inside the other teams lines, so Hakan is not really getting that love anymore because he is not playing a role that todays game appreciates or even likes to use. However since he is a great player, he still gets minutes, not because of his style because his style is out of trend, but because how talented he is.

Haha yeah that's understandable since he is barely made into starting line-up. He probably thinks there is no way to secure his position unless scoring goal. Though, you are right, making assists would be considered as a great contribution for the team as well. I had a high expectation when Milan brought him but only having 1 assist so far isn't impressive at all for a player who playing in his position.

The thing with Atalanta is when they get on a winning streak they start playing better from match to match. They scored 85 goals this season and only Man City has scored more than them(86).  Atalanta is not really a small club,they are probably somewhere in the middle but even so they look pretty damn promising for the future

As I discussed, the next season will be an important one to go to a conclusion that Atalanta whether will officially join the group of big clubs in Italy. 3 continuous season with high forms are enough to help them join the big clubs in the nation.

Le'ts move off to the Scudetto race that is almost finished and the race to Champions League that is discussed many times too. There is another race, personal one, race to the Capocannoniere between Cristiano Ronaldo of Juventus and Cirio Immobile of Lazio. Three goals is the gap now and Immobile takes the lead. Juventus is stronger but they will have to separate their player resources to the Champions League that they very want to win. For rest matches in Serie A, CR7 has more opportunities to score goals because Juventus is too strong in Italy (but it depends on how many matches he will play at lineups). Lazio might give up the Scudetto race soon and it might affect the form of Immobile.

I think CR7 has strong ambition to win the Capocannoniere and it will help him win such personal award in three biggest leagues in the Europe (Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A).

^so Atalanta is the new Ajax 
we should tokenize those players and make some profit too 

atalanta have a plan, they have a BIG growbox with young and strong players.
the meta of atalanta is survive and make money, not win.
if remember they sold many good players to other teams.

no strange, this is a right strategy for a win-win solution.

Atalanta is a biggest surprise from Italy, not only in a single season (last one) but also in the current season when they have maintained their strength and surprising results in both Serie A and Champions League. There are not many small teams can maintain their winning streaks like that in 2 seasons continuously like Atalanta.

If they will be able to maintain their form next season, will it be right to call them as another big team in Italy? I think they will deserve it.

true
if they will be able to remain compact as a team without selling too much players at the next "mercato", Atalanta is one of the best refreshments SerieA is having lately
and they were good in CL too

I have to admit that Atalanta is probably the scariest team to play against right now in Seria A, even for a team like Juventus. They are on a 11 match win streak(all competitions)and nothing seams to stop them. They are really strong at home but during this period I don't know how much it matters if you play at home or away. Anyway, I think Juventus will put on a stronger performance and not lose this match. Both teams will play without worries, Juventus being the champions and Atalanta with a secured UCL spot so I think it's going to be a great match with lots of goals

I know what you mean and thanks for the compliment, it is much appreciated. I didn't single out anyone from midfield/defense on purpose to show that they work as a unit know finally, that is truly the only reason why I didn't name names besides Çalhanoğlu, because he is the obvious one that is visibly jumping out of the system.

I agree with all the points and conclusions you made, except I would say that Paqueta should work maybe a bit less - meaning he should not shoot that often and focus a bit more on passing the ball to open player. I saw too many wild shots from him at the edge of the box, that could've been great assists in last few matches, versus Spal especially. He is too eager to score, he is probably under pressure 'cos Rebic, Zlatan and now recently Leao are scoring and he isn't.

I'm always impressed when seeing someone who not only gives opinion, but also adds deep explanation behind it. No matter what club we are supporting, we always appreciate a good match.

Beside Zlatan and Rebic, we should give credit to Bennacer as well. He really gives an improvement in Milan's midfield area and makes the Kessie's work bit easier. Theo is awesome too, no one predicted him could be as amazing as today in Milan when he was a flop in Madrid. Well, if Kjaer and Paqueta could work bit much harder, then Milan would be perfect.

You as a fan of Atalanta are certainly very happy to see Atalanta's game now even won several times with a large Serie A team, yes I admit that this is the best performance for Atalanta who continues to break down opponents easily but whether this week will be able to overthrow Juventus? although yesterday lost to Ac Milan I'm sure Juventus will not repeat this defeat for the second time.

Atalanta is my favourite story of the season. Exciting players, way of playing and very energetic. Age isn't a problem for Illicic as he is getting better and better. Zapata deserves more praise also. They are so underrated. People always talk about Juventus, Intermilan, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lukaku,etc. They tend to forget these brilliant players from Atalanta. Forza!

I watched the entire game and there are no issues related to lineups at all. As Pmalek says, everyone played where they were supposed to play and everyone who was supposed to play "played".

It was a blackout by Juve, this is simply a fact, but Milan's win can't be diminished cos of that as that was not the only reason. I see lots of you guys write about Juve issues, but I'm not gonna do that because I'm watching Milan in last 5-6 games exclusively and see the improvements. I would say improvements in their game as much as improvement in their approach to the game.

They are playing with more energy, they are fighting more because they know that energy is their best weapon. To translate that, there is awareness that they don't have that much quality overall.

Attack is only real area where they do have quality if Zlatan and Rebic are playing. Rebic has been involved in all 4 goals Milan scored in the match. You have Zlatan who requires attention and Rebic that also requires attention. Both are quite strong physically and they use that well. Zlatan always has 2 players around him and that gives Rebic a lot of space. He uses it well, again strenght and energy in his game are his biggest allies.

Rebic is Milan's biggest win this season if you ask me and I'm happy for both Milan and Rebic.

Midfield is working like a work horse together , only player that has a bit more freedom is Çalhanoğlu and that is good.

Milan took the win from Juve because of the energy and mental approach in the end, not just Juve blackout.

Now at the end of the post I will tell you that I'm a Juve fan, believe it or not

Atalanta won again and next game they will play vs Juventus  .

Luckily for Juve, Atalanta is way back on the leaderboard after the COVID Break the seems on another planet...

Quite great for Milan because they have scored Lazio and Juventus with a very large score, is it possible that there has now been an increase at the end of the season compared to the start of the season which kept losing lots for Milan?
Lazio like it is now very slumped even though the difference is only 4 points but still must be able to maintain it so as not to be displaced by Inter Milan or Atalanta who are now more powerful in his matches.