Atalanta vs Hellas Verona
Hellas Verona’s hopes of avoiding relegation from Serie A are on the line as they take a challenging trip to the Gewiss Stadium to meet Atalanta.
After three consecutive Serie A wins between late April and early May, Atalanta have lost their last two league outings without scoring, practically waving goodbye to their bid to qualify for next season’s Champions League. Another loss ‘to nil’ would see ‘La Dea’ suffer three successive league defeats without scoring for the first time since 2014. However, that’s unlikely to happen. Since taking charge of Atalanta in 2016/17, Gian Piero Gasperini has overseen six victories in nine Serie A encounters against Verona (D1, L2), including a narrow 1-0 triumph in the reverse fixture. That being said, they’ve lost their last two top-flight H2Hs in Bergamo, as many defeats as in their previous 20 home meetings with ‘I Gialloblu’ (W11, D7, L2).
In the meantime, Hellas Verona’s massive problems with inconsistent performances have seen their last eight league matches fluctuate between different outcomes (W3, D2, L3), most recently succumbing to a 1-0 home loss to Torino in the previous round. With five of those eight games seeing one or both sides fail to get on the scoresheet, breaking the deadlock could prove crucial for Verona’s hopes of escaping the bottom three. ‘I Gialloblu’ claimed a 1-0 win at Lecce on their last Serie A travel, but they’ve not registered back-to-back clean sheets on the road in top-flight action since February 2020. That victory was, in fact, Verona/s first league win on hostile turf this season (D7, L9), marking only their third shutout in 17 Serie A away matches in 2022/23.