Atalanta coach Gasperini delighted with performance for victory over Sporting CP

Atalanta coach Gian Piero Gasperini was delighted with his players for their 2-1 Europa League win against Sporting CP.

Giorgio Scalvini and Matteo Ruggeri struck for La Dea, with a Viktor Gyokeres not being enough for Sporting in the end.

Gasperini later said: "We above all did very well in the first half and deserved all three points, but if we were more precise, then we would've killed off the game much earlier.

It is especially dangerous at international level to leave the match open. We lost intensity and the penalty sparked Sporting into life, but in the end we held control fairly well.

Ruggeri is remarkable for his consistency, while Scalvini was tired late on and I preferred to replace him with Palomino. Along with many positives from this evening, there are also a few things we need to look at, but it always helps to win.

We are in a good period of form and we are improving. Now we need to do better when it comes time to do battle. There are many games and some might lose intensity with fatigue, so we have to get more players back to full fitness."

He added: Lookman had perhaps his best performance of the season and also one of the best for Atalanta. He created many dangerous situations and is improving, but I don't know if he will be able to replicate last year's goal tally.

If we always played like the first half, we'd be right up there. It was good that we were able to suffer under pressure in the second half, but players like Scamacca, Holm and De Ketelaere need to find full fitness and improve their mentality too."