In the last two seasons of European football, few coaches can say they have produced better results than Gian Piero Gasperini. The Atalanta coach steered the club to fourth last season, a position that would have meant Champions League football this term, and now has them in sixth which would guarantee European football for another year. In this period, Gasperinis Atalanta has been one of the most entertaining in Europe with their quick passing, energetic pressing and the number of young players promoted to the first team by Gasperini. In this piece I will examine the tactics Gasperini has used to such great effect including his collective man-marking.
Gasperinis preferred formation
During all of his years coaching in the Italian top flight, Gasperini has been synonymous with the 3-4-3 formation. In fairness, his formation changes between two adaptations of this formation; 3-4-2-1 and 3-4-1-2. Mainly it depends on the players he lines up or the setup of the opposition but in his two years at Atalanta his default setup in attack has been 3-4-2-1 while in defence its wrong to talk about a shape. Ill come to this later. Below is an illustration of a normal line-up in the attacking phase.
Atalantas high-pressing
Atalanta are one of the most aggressive teams in Italy and Gasperini instructs his players to press high up the pitch to disturb the opponent. The stats back this up as Atalanta make 18.9 tackles per game on average, a total only Fiorentina better. Similarly, only three teams (Roma, Napoli and Sampdoria) allow their opponent less passes per game than Atalantas 351. These stats highlight the effective pressing of Gasperinis side and how difficult it is to keep the ball against them. So how do they go about it?
When Atalanta press high they do so with extremely obvious man-orientations in a way similar to Eusebio Di Francescos Roma. Gasperinis overall defending strategy is to man-mark the opposition, as well look at later and therefore it comes as no surprise that man-orientated pressing is adopted. Given man-markings reactionary nature, Gasperini adapts his pressing schemes based on the opponents setup. Lets look at two different scenarios below.
The first example is from their home game against Inter. Inter chose to bu
