Atalanta beat 3-1 Torino at the Gewiss Stadium, bringing their points tally to 10 in the standings and becoming joint leaders of the league with Roma. Gian Piero Gasperini’s reaction about the match against the Granata is: “We improved in the second half”.

Gian Piero Gasperini, this win was highly satisfying, as we’re back to winning ways at the Gewiss Stadium.

“We broke this negative record that had lasted for months. If we can win at home, if we earn hard-fought victories like this one, our position on the table benefits from it”.

You said this would be an important match, as the Monza and Torino games would let us understand where we can get.

“No. That wasn’t the reason. [I said that] because we have to make the most of this positive start to the season. We have to score as many points as possible”.

Did you like Atalanta’s performance against Torino?

“I didn’t like it in the first half. We were quite slow in the first half, we were not very aggressive. We were outclassed by them on a technical level. Then we scored, we improved in the second half, we did better and could have done more”.

You gave the young striker Højlund the first appearance for the club.

“He did well. He’s a good profile, the right profile, a striker. He’s a very young guy who has pace and skills. He’s a good player we can work on”.

It was also Josip Iličić’s evening. Did you get emotional saying goodbye to him?

“Yes, absolutely. It’s a beautiful part of our history. I can only wish him the best. I hope he can play some more at his home or somewhere else. And then a new life will begin. He told me he wants to become a coach and I said that I’ll wait for him, I will leave him the sceptre”.

We round off this interview with a question about the next fixture, as this is a midweek round. You played three games within one week and you have Monza on Monday.

“There are no easy games. We’ll face a team [Monza] that has created problems for everyone. There is always an excess of criticism on Atalanta, as we won at Sampdoria and it seemed a bad game. Then we saw Sampdoria draw with Juventus and Lazio, Napoli tied with Lecce. The Italian league is difficult. This win puts us at the top of the table, even if doesn’t count right now. We’ll try to stay up there as long as we can”.