In a quickfire Q&A conducted with Uefa TV last year, Rafael Tolói was asked to describe the final thing he’d like to achieve in football, replying: “I’d like to get Atalanta to [Bigger Cup] or win a trophy.” As luck would have it, the veteran defender who has represented the side from Bergamo with no little distinction for almost a decade wasn’t forced to choose between his two ambitions.
Having been given a second yellow for a preposterous swallow dive in the Feyenoord penalty area some hours previously, Milan’s Théo Hernandez might have been forgiven for thinking his would be the most embarrassing red card this week, or at the very least in Bigger Cup matches featuring out-of-sorts Italian sides hosting teams from the Low Countries.
With his head completely gone and the rest of him enveloped in a mist so red it’s actually prefaced by the adjective “volcanic” on the Dulux colour chart, Tolói went into raging bull mode, pawing the ground for purchase, before charging past the referee to blindside De Cuyper with a shoulder charge that knocked the impertinent Belgian to the ground.
The Atalanta boss’s withering criticism prompted Lookman to fire off a riposte, bemoaning the manner in which he had been “singled out” for “deeply disrespectful” blame in the form of a statement; one that weighed in at 183 words, not one of which happened to mention, or even allude to, just how poor his penalty was.
He and his teammates would subsequently hoist Big Vase towards the sky over Dublin, rubber stamping a place in Bigger Cup they had already secured anyway by dint of their fourth-placed finish in the Italian league.
