Duvan Zapata

Even Muriel scored a goal. I'll be honest, it kind of pissed me off how cool he looked on the free kick. Not sure why it hit me the way it did.

I want both of them to do good but also with the NT.

 

not fault of them for sure.

 

We have weapons, our managers can't figure out how to set up to utilize them. It's a shame.

 

Duvan with a golazo!!!

DEA is up 0-1 at halftime over Juve.

 

The guy has put Atalanta on his back this season, 7 games in a row with a goal. Anybody still think he shouldn't be the starter?

 

He scored a lot of goals and was really good when Atalanta also faced a lot of teams playing deep against them when they were much more outright attacking. We have no semblance of an offense, even though quite often we are set up to counter attack its all still down to a Diaz piece of brilliance and it almost never runs through the middle which is the quickest route on goal when you are trying to transition. Having James back maybe that changes, but a lot of the last game where he started he was kept fairly wide which didn't allow him to dictate transitions more. The 4-4-2 is just broken for us, we need one less striker, more creativity and for Cuadrado probably at RB. We would still be so set up for a -3-4-3 or 3-5-2 allowing Cuadrado play but without being a winger or RB with more defensive responsibilities.

 

It's pointless but imagine this lineup with our squad:

------------Duvan
--Sini/Muriel---James
Diaz-Cantillo-Barrios-Cuadrado
----Mina-Cuesta-Munoz

That attack could be something special, gets Cuadrado/James/Sini or Muriel all in good positions. One sacrifice is Diaz is pushed a bit wide and further back but you could give him plenty of freedom if you wanted.

 

I said it before but if we had 2012 Falcao on our current squad, we would still be playing C0-0mbia style [emoji460]️

Without guys like Aldo, Mac10, Abel (pre 2014), Edwin (2012) and Uribe (pre 2018), we just play Sunday pick-up game style.

 

C0-0mbia, oh wow, that hurts!!!

But its true, lol!!!

 

Man it's there and hik scoring against Juve always puts a smile on my face.

 

The places we are getting him the ball sucks, he's either dropping way too deep to defend because we are constantly pushed back out of possession or he's being parked in the box while crosses come from wide. For all of our strikers its just a big problem, but for Duvan especially he's really good at combining and making runs, playing people in with give and go's and overall just feeds off combination play. We have basically none of that as a team, our 2 CM's are not breaking from midfield, Cuadrado the RM quite often is not breaking past strikers or looking to combine to much the only one is probably Diaz but he starts so wide its difficult. We have no dynamism other then Diaz, the 4-4-2 we are playing with the players we have is just really very predictable, with a '10' at RM its better but even then we need to get them much more central and Cuadrado pushed up to have better combinations with strikers and we just haven't had these guys all working together much in this formation to have cohesiveness. IDK what the real options are for these last games, and Rueda doesn't seem willing to change formation or tactics all that much, really gotta hope that the players simply pull it out because they are good, but that hasn't happened as of yet.

 

So who are we rooting for today Duvan / Muriel or Ospina??

What’s the proper etiquete here? [emoji6]

 

How about we go for a 1-1 tie with either Duvan or Muriel getting the goal?

 

That's 8 games in a row with a goal or assist and 11/13 games with a goal or assist (only subbed in a few of those) on top of all the little things he does with his hold up play or movement that doesn't show up in the stats either.

 

Video of Zapata goal against Villarreal

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Muriel also looked good off the bench and hit the post from a long range effort. Muriel still looks a little off the pace since his injury, hopefully he's ok and gets some starts soon to find a rhythm. Duvan again at the center of everything offensively for Atalanta, the defense really was terrible yesterday and handed Villareal that game.

 

Gasperini was slow in the changes in many matches, and sometimes he did not use all their subs. Apart from an extremely busy season, Atalanta's high pressure style means that their midfield is gassed at around minute 75. By not using all the subs or delaying them, Gasperini allowed other teams to outlast them and turn around results.