Luis Muriel scored another stunner to make it 2-0 against Spezia for Atalanta (3-1 was the final result, the other two nets are a brace from Mario Pašalić). The Colombian is happy, as that was his 19th goal of the season: “It was a nice and important goal”.
“It was a stunner. It was an important goal even for the game, as it doubled our lead immediately after Mario [Pašalić]’s goal. That goal allowed us to take the game more calmly”.
When a player scores such a goal, the goalkeeper can’t do anything about it.
“It was a very quick play. He probably didn’t expect it. – You hit the top corner. – As soon as I saw the ball roll back, I controlled it and I curled it. I don’t know if he expected me to touch it one more time or something else, I didn’t put too much power into it and went for some kind of lob. A nice goal came out of it”.
You made it 2-0 and scored the goal that allowed you to be calmer in the game, as Spezia are tough to face.
“Yes, they’re very difficult [to face]. We saw that in the first half, they made us struggle a lot. I think my goal took the wind out of their sails. They pressed less, they stopped playing out from the back as they did in the first half. That allowed us to breathe, to take it slow. Then we scored a third and that gave us the certainty of having the game under control”.
That’s where you started thinking about the Champions League fixture against Real Madrid.
“Yes, then Spezia made it 3-1 and that surely put some concern on this game again, but we did well. We had a few more opportunity to make it 4-1, but, of course, we started thinking about that match”.
The qualification race is still open on Tuesday. It’ll be difficult, of course, as Real Madrid start from the win at the Gewiss Stadium, but Atalanta can still play for it.
“We go there to fight it out. We are aware of our means, we can play for the qualification, we can produce a strong display. We have the quality and the features to do that and we want to do that. We want to go there to grasp all the opportunities we have”.