Rome (AFP)

You can be extremely rich and still have dreams to fulfill: that of Atalanta president Antonio Percassi will materialize on Tuesday (9 p.m.) when the Champions League hymn will resound for the first time in Bergamo, a city hard hit by the coronavirus.

"Being able to play the Champions League in Bergamo is something important sportingly, but also from an emotional point of view", explains to AFP Fabio Gennari, author of a book recently published in Italy retracing the incredible course of a provincial team which became the best in Italy last season in C1, but deprived of matches in its stadium.

"There is a social stake in hosting such a competition, a kind of rebirth for the city, which has been perceived as the epicenter of the pandemic," he adds.

The province of Bergamo has been the most affected in Italy by the coronavirus along with that of Brescia.

The excess mortality has been estimated at nearly 7,000 dead and no one has forgotten the images of military trucks carrying coffins, so many that they must have been piled into churches.

These weeks of March left a lasting mark on the Lombard city and pushed the president of Atalanta, the wealthy entrepreneur Antonio Percassi, to accelerate the renovation of the stadium.

The enclosure, bought in 2017 by the club from the city, has been completely revised in three months to bring it up to UEFA standards.

The European body has just given the green light.

- Baby swimsuit -

Last season, for its first participation in the C1, the "Dea" had to "welcome" to San Siro, in Milan, after having played in the Europa League in Reggio Emilia in previous seasons.

This hard work and "this important investment respond to a specific desire of the owner to bring this competition to Bergamo", explained this summer Roberto Spagnolo, responsible for carrying out this project for the club.

Disappointment for President Percassi: this European first in Bergamo, against Ajax Amsterdam (9 p.m.), will be behind closed doors, under the new rules that came into force Monday in Italy.

"But given where the stadium is located, very visible from the upper town, I imagine that a lot of supporters will meet, if only to hear the anthem resound in the city," Fabio Gennari predicts.

"When you don't live in Bergamo, it's difficult to really understand what Atalanta represents for Bergamasques. It's an almost natural relationship," he underlines.

Andrea Riscassi, sports journalist at Rai and another great connoisseur of Atalanta, confirms: "Do you know of other clubs that send baby-sized swimsuits to all the newborns in the city? It doesn't exist anywhere else in Italy ".

- Winning transfers -

"This strong identification link is unique, it is undoubtedly found in Bilbao or Glasgow," he told AFP.

By emphasizing that this link was further strengthened during the spring confinement, which all the club's players, although almost all foreigners, spent in Lombardy.

Beyond the symbolic and emotional aspect of playing in a city in mourning, the modernization of the stadium is also part of the economic and sporting development of Atalanta, "success story" of Italian football in recent years.

"From a management point of view, Atalanta is in my opinion a model. The club never makes investments out of reach for it. The acquisition of the stadium and its renovation have thus been completely absorbed", assures Fabio Gennari .

And if the "Dea" has offered a few more expensive players in the last two seasons to keep pace in C1 (Muriel, Malinovski, Miranchuk), its training policy allows it to balance the accounts thanks to winning sales: these last months, it has cashed almost 100 million euros with the departures of Dejan Kulusevski (Juventus), Amad Traoré (Manchester United) and Timothy Castagne (Leicester).

For Atalanta de Percassi, there is now only one title missing to record in the history of a club whose record includes only one Italian Cup in the 1960s. A new dream to be fulfilled for the wealthy president.

© 2020 AFP