Football ,
May 22, 11:53 pm
Miranchuk’s Atalanta won the Europa League, beating the invincible Bayer
The Italian club inflicted Bayer’s first defeat of the season. Xabi Alonso’s team broke a record unbeaten streak of 51 matches for the top 5 European football leagues
Europa League trophy
(Photo: Joern Pollex/Bongarts/Getty Images)
Italian Atalanta footballers defeated German Bayer with a score of 3:0 in the last match of the Europa League, which took place in Dublin.
The goals were scored by Ademola Lookman (12th, 26th and 75th minutes).
Lookman is the second in the history of the Europa League/UEFA Cup finals to score a hat-trick. The first hat-trick was obtained by Jupp Heynckes in 1975 for Borussia Mönchengladbach. Never before has an African player scored more than one goal in a European Cup final.
The midfielder of the Russian national team, Alexey Miranchuk, who remains in reserve, plays for Atalanta. Miranchuk became the first Russian to win the tournament after it was renamed the Europa League.
Atalanta played in the Europa League final for the first time; Atalanta became the first Italian team to win the Europa League/UEFA Cup since Parma won the trophy in 1999.
This season, for the first time, Bayer conceded three goals and did not score one in a game. The Leverkusen club reached the final of the Europa League with a streak of 51 games without defeat in all tournaments – this is a record for the top 5 European football leagues. The last time Xabi Alonso’s team lost was last season – in the last match of the national championship to Bochum (0:3). The current German championship Bayer is undefeated, this happened for the first time in the history of the Bundesliga. On May 25, the team is still waiting for the German Cup final against Kaiserslautern.
According to the regulations, the winner of the Europa League final will receive a ticket to the Champions League for the following season. But both teams have already earned it for themselves, Atalanta, two games before the end of the Italian Championship, will not fall to fifth place.
Last season, Spanish Sevilla won the Europa League. In 2005 and 2008, the tournament was won by CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg, respectively.
Russian clubs have been suspended from European competitions due to a special military operation in Ukraine.