Shakhtar v Atalanta: the stats of the game
Djimsiti, Lookman and Bellanova all taking their UCL first bow
At the Veltis-Arena in Gelsenkirchen the Nerazzurri have claimed their first win in the 2024-2025 UEFA Champions League Phase in style after imposing themselves over Shakthar Donetsk at the end of a game rich in historic firsts: as pointed out by Opta Facts' Stats Perform, Berat Djimsiti, Ademola Lookman and Raoul Bellanova, the three Nerazzurri scorer of the game, all found their first UCL goal last night.
Additionally, for the second time in their Champions League record thus far after the away game in Liverpool back on the 25th of November 2020, Atalanta have not threatened by a single shot on target for the whole duration of the match and by a single hit for the whole first half (an historic first time for the Club). As a further plus, with the Nerazzurri barraging 22 shots over the course of the game, only once had the Bergamo team ever registered better firing figures (namely, in the match v Dinamo Zagreb on November 26 20019, when the count stopped at 23).
Moving on to the individual match logs, Ademola Lookman is but the second-ever Atalanta player to have sscored a goal and provided an assist in the same UCL game after Duván Zapata (twice). Moreover, the black-and-blue number 11 (currently at 20 goals scored and 11 assists provided) is, together with Christian Pulisic, one of the two Serie A players to have bagged at least 20 nets and provided 10 assists over the course of the past two seasons. Out of all Serie A players, only Lautaro Martínez (34) and Christian Pulisic (32) can flaunt a better overall scoring contribution than Lookman (31: 20G+11A) since the start of the previous campaignin all competitions.
Lazar Samardžić was instead the first player to have accrued 8 successfull dribbling in a single UEFA Champions League match since Lionel Messi's performance against Inter back in October 2019. While Berat Djimsiti is the first Atalanta defender to have found his scoring ways in the Champions League since José Palomino back in November 2021 (when he bagged the Nerazzurri's second of the night in the match against Young Boys), Raoul Bellanova has become the second Italian Nerazzurro in the UCL after Matteo Pessina (who netted the winner in the fixture v Young Boys on September 29 2021). Lastly, Davide Zappacosta played his 150th game in all competitions donning the black-and-blue shirt (with a current offensive record of 12 goals and 18 assists).