Atalanta win Europa League as Lookman hat-trick ends Leverkusen’s unbeaten run

Nothing, not the Roman Empire, not the Zhou dynasty, not even Last of the Summer Wine, lasts for ever, and neither did Bayer Leverkusen’s unbeaten run. After 51 games, their pursuit of a flawless season came to an end at the penultimate hurdle as an Ademola Lookman hat-trick gave Atalanta a surprisingly comfortable victory and a first European trophy.

After all the talk of the emergence of Xabi Alonso as one of Europe’s most promising young coaches, it was an experienced old hand who took the laurels. At 66, Gian Piero Gasperini has his first silverware, a deserved moment of tangible success in a career that has been spent performing a highly impressive job out of the limelight.

That talk about Alonso was not wrong: winning the Bundesliga with any side other than Bayern is a remarkable feat, and all the more so to do it the way he has, but here his side were rattled out of their stride by Atalanta’s dynamism and organisation and, for once, the late surge didn’t deliver. At the last, Leverkusen ran out of comebacks.

There was a sense the Europa League was made for this: two teams who have had excellent seasons, both playing bright, vibrant football, given a stage on which to enjoy a grand European night before the superclubs descend to feast upon their finest talents. Atalanta’s list of honours before this season comprised only the 1963 Coppa Italia; Bayer Leverkusen, mocked as Neverkusen around the turn of the millennium for the number of times they came second, had just a DFB Pokal from 1993 and a Uefa Cup from 1988. It may have been a grey and chilly spring day in Dublin but for the fans of both clubs, there was a palpable excitement just to be here; for them the experience of finals has not become a cloyingly familiar routine as it can seem to for fans of the superclubs.

Alonso had talked about his side’s confidence as the vital factor that had driven them unbeaten to this point of the season but there was a curious edginess about them early on. They are often slow starters, their capacity for late goals to preserve their record the major factor in giving this season an unreal air, a fantasy to be lived only once and milked for every second of joy while it endures.

Edmond Tapsoba, Bayer’s right-sided centre-back, had already been notably wasteful in possession on a couple of occasions, offering chances to Atalanta, before the Italian side took a 12th-minute lead, thanks largely to a bizarre moment of ­doziness from Exequiel Palacios. As the former Chelsea full-back Davide Zappacosta crossed from the right, the Argentinian seemed to have plenty of time to clear. But he waited, apparently unaware there was anybody behind him, and Lookman stole in front of him to slam the ball into the top corner, his surname serving as an admonition to Palacios of what he should have been doing.

That goal was the result of a combination of Lookman’s alertness and defensive laxity and his second was similar. Amine Adli nodded a clearance from his goalkeeper back towards his midfield but it drifted through everybody to reach the Nigeria winger. He cut infield, nutmegged Granit Xhaka and whipped a perfect finish inside the far post. In the technical area Gasperini, wearing jeans, a fleece and trainers like a recently retired man off to B&Q before a spot of DIY, celebrated with the understated joy of somebody discovering a two-for-one offer on exactly the sort of paint he needed.

Given the run they are on, Leverkusen are not the sort of side to panic at being two behind. It was, after all, the fourth time it had happened in this Europa League campaign – and it was one fewer goal to pull back than Alonso had faced the first time he won a European competition, for Liverpool against Milan in Istanbul in 2005. His equivalent of Didi Hamann, the sub thrown on at half-time to transform the game, was Victor Boniface.

Leverkusen had chances. Álex Grimaldo, just needing to lift the ball over Juan Musso had fluffed his lob even before half-time, and Jeremie Frimpong slashed a volley over after Musso had parried an Adli cross.

But although they had a lot of the ball in the second half, Leverkusen struggled to build real pressure against a well-organised defence. And then, with 15 minutes remaining came the coup de grace. Gianluca Scamacca, in his ponderous way, led a break and shovelled a pass to Lookman, at which point the game abruptly sped up as he cut on to his left foot and smashed his finish into the opposite top corner.