The glory of the latter days shall be bigger than the former, says the Holy Book, though it was referring to the Israelites of the time, but, people nowadays use this phrase when discussing hopes and believe in the future.
The football fraternity witnessed a super season in terms of record breaking, from Girona qualified for the UCL for the first time in their history, to Aston Villa making a comeback to the UCL also after a long decades away, Brest in Ligue 1, Bologna in the Italian Serie A, Vfb Stuttgart all making it to the grand competition of the UEFA club competition and the grand master of them all, Xabi Alonso-led Bayer Leverkusen, rampaged Bundesliga and Europe with a mesmerizing performance, they were unbeaten throughout the season, they broke every record alkng the way, setting new ones too, the most prominent being the longest unbeaten run by an European team, an astonishing 50-game haul, replacing Benfica at the top echelon who recently had 49 games invincibility record set way back 1965.
No one expected this but the biggest of it all was rather depressing and the same time mind blowing, after a 50-game of superiority, they have just two games left to have an immortal season, not looking single match, this matches are all finals, UEFA Europa League, and the DFB pokal.
The unprecedented now became the dream of every football lovers, may be with an exception of a little known Nigerian dazzler, in Ademola Lookman. The stage is set and its time to conquer the second tier of European club competition after winning the German Bundesliga week back, in Grand style, everyone wants to see Leverkusen defeat Atalanta Bergamo, and keep the adrenaline pumping for the the last match and become only the first team in the history of football to achieve such feat, but....... Ademola wouldn't succumb to that's school of thought.
It took just two minutes of play for Lookman to open what turned out to be a floodgate of goals, Xabi made a schoolboy error in his tactics, selecting a starting Xi without a proper striker. He paid dearly for it, as the team played without vision since they are aware of the lack of a goal-poacher, they loose the ball too often I the midfield and Gian Piero Gasperrini was wise enough to build his attack around a swift attacker of Ademola Lookman's caliber, who tormented Leverkusen's defense with his amazing run and a skillful play.
Things got messier in the second half and the game was put to bed when Atalanta added two quick goals in the 66th minutes scores again by Lookman, thus becoming only the sixth player to an hat-trick in an UEFA finals.
Xabi Alonso's tactical flaw was exposed by Gasperrini as Atalanta played a high-press throughout the night, thus opening the door for other teams to exploit Alonso and his boys.
The fairy tale ended in just 90 minutes of undiluted football by Atalanta Bergamo, and the 360 days unbeaten streak was broken in rumbles, what a sad end to a beautiful story of luck-romance for Leverkusen as they even waited for that last minute miracle they've always experienced, scoring 90+ goals to either tie a match or win, but it's wasn't meant to happen that day.
What an ugly end......??
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