Atalanta beat Frosinone 2-0 at the Stadio Atleti Azzurri d’Italia on Sunday condemning Frosinone to their second defeat in a row.
The Nerazzurri downed their adversaries with one goal in each half, Guglielmo Stendardo scoring the first and Alejandro Gomez wrapping up the game by lashing home from 30 yards.
The first half saw the game burst into action with plenty of opportunities arising. Within the first ten minutes, Mauricio Pinilla was taken down in the box by Leonardo Blanchard who received a yellow card. Following the foul, Nicola Leali made a great save from a powerful Pinilla penalty driven towards the bottom left hand corner.
The young goalkeeper continued to stand strong as he parried a Stendardo follow up shot. Minutes later, Pinilla nearly redeemed himself with a dangerous header just missing the target.
Following the penalty incident, Atalanta took command of the game. The Nerazzurri won the battle in midfield, a theme that would continue throughout the rest of the match, allowing the impressive Argentinian duo of Maximiliano Moralez and Gomez to dictate threatening attacking plays. The Frosinone midfield seemed absent as the two pacey midfielders were given acres of space to play in seeing them charge at the Frosinone back four with flair.
Suddenly, against the run of play Samuele Longo nearly managed to give his team an unexpected lead. He chased a poor back pass that beat Sportiello who only just managed to knock the ball to safety sending a wave of relief through the stands. At the other end of the pitch, Longo re-demonstrated his phenomenal potential with a brilliant save from a menacing Kurtic free kick by knocking the long range drive over the bar.
From the start of the second half, Atalanta took their dominant first half performance into the new half. This culminated in Gomez scoring a sensational strike. The Argentinian created himself a chance with good play on the ball and hit it with the outside of his foot from 30 yards. The swerving ball beat Leali convincingly who couldn’t stop this one from hitting the back of the net.
The remainder of the game featured a beaten Frosinone battling to keep the scoreline at 2-0. Boukary Drame hit the post from a long range effort and Pinilla continued to force brilliant saves out of Leali, without whom Frosinone would have suffered a much worse fate.
The outcome of this match sees Frosinone get beaten again, strongly suggesting that this will be a difficult season for the newly promoted Canarini.
