Match Pack: Atalanta BC vs Athletic Club (Champions League MD7)

Thousands of fans have travelled to Italy to see Athletic Club face in-form Atalanta BC in our last away match of the 2025/26 UCL League Phase.

Athletic are 28th in the standings, two points and four places away from the cut-off point. Ernesto Valverde's charges head into the fixture on the back of a Copa win over Cultural Leonesa and an unfortunate LaLiga loss to RCD Mallorca. They will be gunning for a positive result to give us a fighting chance of qualification when we host Sporting CP at San Mames next week.

In recent years, Atalanta have become a regular force in European football, qualifying for the Champions League group phase in five of the last seven seasons. What's more, in 2023/24 they lifted the UEFA Europa League, their first major continental trophy.

Raffaele Palladino's side are one of the dark horses this year, currently sitting fifth in the League Phase table with four wins, one draw and just one loss so far. 
 

Match Info

Stadio di Bergamo, Bergamo

UEFA Champions League, League Phase MD7

Wednesday January 21, 21:00 CET
 

 

Team news

Ernesto Valverde has named a 23-man squad for Wednesday night's clash.

Athletic have a lengthy injury list: Maroan, Beñat Prados, Aymeric Laporte, Iñaki Williams, Nico Williams, Yuri Berchiche and Alex Berenguer are all unavailable for selection.
 

 

Valverde's and Galarreta's pre-match comments

Catch up with everything the gaffer and Iñigo had to say.



 

The Opponents

Based in the city of Bergamo, Atalanta were founded in 1907 by students of Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi, one of Italy's most famous secondary schools. The club's name is taken from a heroine of Greek mythology.

In 1920, Atalanta merged with another local side, Bergamesca, to become Atalanta Bergamasca Calcio. It was also at this moment which 'La Dea' (The Goddess) changed colours from black and white to black and blue.

Atalanta have a reputation for punching above their weight compared to teams from bigger cities and are sometimes referred to as 'The Queen of the Provinces'. This is because they hold the record for most seasons played in the Serie A (65) among sides not representing regional capitals. What's more, together with Genoa, Atalanta have won the most Serie B titles and promotions to Serie A.

The Bergamo outfit have two major honours to their name. The 1962/62 Coppa Italia, which they won after beating Torino FC 3-1 in the final, and the 2023/24 UEFA Europa League, where they ruined Bayer Leverkusen's season-long unbeaten run with a 3-0 victory in the final. Their journey to that showpiece in Dublin also saw them overcome Sporting CP (round of 16), Liverpool FC (quarter-finals) and Olympique Marseille (semi-finals).

Atalanta have become an ever present in continental competitions since qualifying for the 2017/18 Europa League - their first European campaign since the 1990/91 season. With the exception of 2022/23, they've qualified for either the Champions League or Europa League every single season for the past nine years. 

The Italian club place a strong focus on youth development, a tradition that dates back to the 1940s with the side winning a first national youth championship in 1949. However, increased investment in the early '90s led to huge spike in the production of players. Since 1991, Atalanta have won 19 different national youth trophies at various age-group levels.

According to the CIES Football Observatory, the Bergamo side's academy is the second most prolific in Italian football (only bettered by AS Roma), having developed a total of 49 players that have gone on to have a career in Europe's top-five leagues over the last ten years.

Atalanta play at the 23,500-capacity New Balance Arena (known as the Stadio di Bergamo in European competitions), which has been their home ground since 1928. 
 

Head coach: 

Former Juventus, Genoa and Parma player Raffaele Palladino took over from Ivan Juric (himself a replacement for previous coach Gian Piero Gasperin) in November 2025 after a rocky start to the season.

Palladino has steadied the ship, with La Dea winning all but three Serie A matches since he came in and climbing from 13th to seventh in the standings.

The 41-year-olds previous managerial appointments include spending the 2024/25 season at ACF Fiorentina in which he guided them to sixth place and qualification for the UEFA Conference League.

Prior to that, he got his break at AC Monza, leading the side to an unexpected 12th place in 2022/23 and repeating the feat in 2023/24.
 

Standout players:

The Atalanta squad reflects what the club has become famous for over the past decade, mixing established internationals with emerging local talents.

These are the 18 Atalanta players called up by their national teams for the November international fixtures:

Goalkeepers: Marco Carnesecchi (Italy)
Defenders: Sead Kolasinac (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Berat Djimsiti (Albania), Isak Hien (Sweden), Odilon Kossounou (Ivory Coast) Midfielders: Mario Pašalić (Croatia), Éderson (Brazil), Raoul Bellanova, Daniel Maldini & Davide Zappacosta (Italy), Charles De Ketelaere (Belgium), Lazar Samardžić (Serbia), Nicola Zalewski (Poland), Yunus Musah (USA)
Forwards: Ademola Lookman (Nigeria), Gianluca Scamacca (Italy), Nikola Krstović (Montenegro), Kamaldeen Sulemana (Ghana)

Other prominent players in the current squad include Dutch midfielder and club captain Marten de Roon, young Nigerian centre back Honest Ghanor, Italian midfielders Lorenzo Bernasconi and Marco Brescianini, as well as defender Giorgio Scalvini, already capped eight times by Italy.
 

Recent form:

The Italians only loss in this season's Champions League was a 4-0 opening day away defeat to Paris Saint-Germain. They also drew 0-0 with Slavia Prague. Those results aside Atalanta have been in impressive form in the League Phase, beating Club Brugge (2-1 in Bergamo), Marseille (0-1 in France), Eintracht Frankfurt (0-3 in Germany) and Chelsea (2-1 at the Stadio di Bergamo).

They've won five, drawn one and lost just once in their last seven Serie A fixtures. Their most recent outing was a 1-1 away draw with Pisa.
 

Interesting facts:

• They reached the semi-finals of the 1988 European Cup Winners' Cup while playing in Serie B, an unprecedented feat for any other second division club in a continental competition. 
• Similar to the AC Foundation, Atalanta have a project, called 'Neonati Atalanti', in which all newborns in the province of Bergamo received a club jersey.
• Since 2010, Atalanta have always played their last home match of the year, named 'the Christmas Match', in special kits, often sporting unique designs inspired by the local community. The match-worn kits are then auctioned off for charity.
• The club crest features the Greek mythological heroine Atalanta.

 

Athletic-Italy connections

We've played a total of 23 official matches against eight different Italian sides and 11 in Italy itself, making it the country Athletic have visited most times for European fixtures.

Our first ever trip over the Mediterranean Sea took place in 1956 when we faced AC Milan in the final of the Latin Cup (a predecessor to the Champions League, played between the Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese champions). The Lions' most recent match in Italy saw us take on AS Roma in last season's Europa League. In fact, we went to the Stadio Olimpico twice in 2024/25 - first for a League Phase match and then for the first leg of our round-of-16 tie.

Athletic Club Women's only official fixture against an Italian team was a 1-0 loss against Bardolino in the 2007/08 Champions League group stages. Curiously, all Athletic's group matches were played in Slovenian capital Ljubljana as ZNK Krka were designated group hosts.

Two legends of Italian football have won the One Club Man award. AC Milan icon Paolo Maldini received the trophy in 2016 and Inter Milan hero Giussepe Bergomi collected the accolade in 2024.

Alex Berenguer is the only current first-team squad member who has competed in Italian football. The winger spent three seasons at Torino FC before moving to Athletic at the beginning of the 2020/21 campaign.

There are two former Lions plying their trade in the Serie A at the moment. Oier Zarraga signed for Udinese Calcio ahead of the 2023/24 season and has made 52 appearances for the Friulian club. Unai Nuñez joined Hellas Verona last summer and has played 16 matches so far this campaign. Retired centre-forward Fernando Llorente played for three different Italian outfits after leaving Athletic: Juventus, SSC Napoli and Udinese.

Former Athletic Club Women midfielder Oihane Valdezate moved to AS Roma in 2023, helping the Giallorosse win a Serie A and Coppa Italian double during her first season in the capital. Legendary Lioness Joana Flaviano spent the 2014/15 season at Sardinia-based club.

With the exception of his time in charge at Athletic (1935-37), William Garbutt spent all of his managerial career in Italy, including a fifteen-year spell at Genoa in which he won three Italian Championships. Regarded as one of the most influential coaches in the history of Italian football, he would also lead the national team, AS Roma, Napoli and AC Milan.

The Leones Italianos - Italiako Lehoiak, based in Bergamo, are Athletic's official Italian fan club in Italy and have been representing the Zurigorri for over 26 years.

 

How to Watch

Check out our global TV guide to make sure you don't miss the match. 

You can also follow the fixture, and keep up to date with everything Athletic related, through the official Athletic Club app, as well as on our website and social media accounts:

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English: @Athletic_en

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