Atalanta Avventura | Part 38: Eight-Two Be Sundowns

We’ve stepped into the past to revive our Atalanta series on the blog today, as we push ahead with the save that’s taken us deep into the 2030s.

For those new to the save, we took over Atalanta on Football Manager 2019 and gradually built them into a Champions League contender before winning the title for the first time in the club’s history in 2024.

We’ve since gone on to dominate in Italy and beyond, racking up a total of 11 Serie A titles and 5 Champions League wins, as well as coming Runner-Up in 2028, and 2 Europa League successes. That’s in addition to a record-equalling 4 Club World Cups and 4 European Super Cups, 6 Italian Super Cups and 3 Italian Cups.

In 2034, the Atalanta boys completed a quadruple of an 11th successive league title alongside lifting the Champions League, the Club World Cup and the Italian Super Cup. What’s more, we completed a second successive season without a league defeat!

And we began the 2034/35 campaign with a customary Summer of big-money sales. This included Juan Carlos Marin going to Stoke for a huge £34.5 million. In total, we brought in around £60 million. No major signings occurred, with the focus as usual going on adding youngsters to the squad.

A strong season start

The new campaign began with lifting the Euro Super Cup with a 2-0 win over Alaves, who’d won the Europa League in 2034 thanks to two goals from Nigerian right-winger George Aliyu. A 5th Super Cup was added to the now considerable trophy cabinet.

The league campaign began with a 3-1 win at home to Pescara thanks to a hat-trick from superstar midfielder Timmi Uldbjerg, which we followed up with a 1-1 draw at Inter despite having Gabriele D’Alessandro sent off after just 6 minutes.

We then went on an incredible run of 12 successive wins without conceding a single goal, which included 5-0 thumpings of both Sampdoria and Palermo. Importantly, we also beat Juventus 1-0 with a goal from superb midfielder and academy product Matteo Giacalone then went to Milan and won 1-0 with a goal from striker Bjorn Amler.

Both Giacalone and Amler were also on the scoresheet as we defeated Sporting Lisbon – the subject of my first FM20 blog save – 3-0 en route to qualifying from our Champions League group with ease.

2034 was wrapped up with league wins over Fiorentina and SPAL then a 2-2 draw against Crotone, in which we had 35 shots to their 8.

Conquering the World again

Those three games followed another Club World Cup campaign, in which we defeated Mexican side Club América 4-2 in the semi-final thanks to an Amler brace and goals from Giacalone and Aliyu.

But things got really interesting in the Final, where we took on South African side Sundowns. And the boys really turned up for this one, with Amler and Giacalone braces getting things going. Exciting left-winger Alexander Zeller then pitched in with a hat-trick and centre-back Rostislav Hubnik added one to confirm a huge 8-0 victory.

That ensured we were World Champions for a record-breaking fifth time!