Pre-Match Report
Niko Kovac: “We need to push ourselves to the limit”
The scenario
“We're definitely not coming here to manage the game and the result. That won't get us anywhere,” said Kovac, who announced: “We want to try to impose our own game.” If BVB manage to “score a goal, then we'll have a lot more confidence.” The head coach described the 2-0 lead from the first leg as “a good result, but nothing more. That's why we'll clearly focus on our game. We have to be sharp and we have to be good, and if we want to advance to the next round, we need to push ourselves to the limit. And the limit is always 100%.”
Personnel matters
The head coach is missing only Niklas Süle and Filippo Mane, but Emre Can and Nico Schlotterbeck are back in the squad! “If they train with the team, they are also available for selection. It helps, of course, when the two captains are in the squad,” said Kovac. However, that does not mean that both will start: “We need to discuss that again. In a very important and certainly very intense game, they will help us when needed.” (The squad)
Debut
Jobe Bellingham sat alongside the head coach at an international press conference for the first time. The 20-year-old Englishman summed up his move to BVB in June last year: “It was a good next step for me and for my development.” He added: “The last few games have been successful, and I've enjoyed playing. The coach has helped me improve physically.”
The opponent
After four wins and a draw in their last five league games, most recently a 2-1 comeback win against third-placed and reigning champions SSC Napoli, Atalanta are seventh in the table, one point behind Juventus in fifth. The club, which was founded in 1907, has never successfully overcome a two-goal deficit from the first leg in a European competition and has never beaten a German opponent by two or more goals at home (to the facts). Niko Kovac expects a “heated atmosphere” in a small stadium: “There will be singing for 90 minutes. And they (the Atalanta players, ed.) will certainly get all the support they need to put in a good performance.”
Boris Rupert