Josip Ilicic
Atalanta talisman missing from action
The strange case of Atalanta star Josip Ilicic has become one of the great footballing enigmas of this COVID-driven 2020. Ilicic fell right off the radar, out of the team and out of sight, at the very height of a fabulous Atalanta season which took the Bergamo club to unprecedented heights, not only finishing third in Serie A but ending their season in Lisbon with a Champions League quarter-final elimination by Paris Saint-Germain.
Depression, anxiety and mental stress are nothing new for top-flight professional athletes. It is part of the price some players pay for the joys of a pressurised, physically demanding profession, lived out in the constant, unforgiving glare of the public eye.
Not, indeed, that we know for certain that Ilicic has suffered from some form of depression. Yet what we do know is that, as one source told World Soccer: “Whatever else, there is nothing physically wrong with Ilicic.”
So what went wrong with the talented 32-year-old Slovene? Since his last appearance for Atalanta in a 2-2 draw with Juventus on July 11, he has become an object of mystery. At first it seemed that he was merely injured and would soon be back. Media reports suggested that he was in a “race against time” to get back for the quarter-final tie in Lisbon. Bit by bit, it emerged that he was not injured but that, nonetheless, would not feature in Portugal.
He continued to remain out of sight and was significantly still missing on the night that Atalanta launched their 2020-21 season in late August. As a matter of principle and out of respect for his privacy, the club will not publicly discuss the “Ilicic question.”
Club spokesman Andrea Lazzaroni said that whilst he could tell us nothing about Ilicic’s well being, he could confirm that the club still hoped to see him return for training. While they waited for their wayward genius, however, Atalanta understandably covered themselves with the purchase of Lokomotiv Moscow player Aleksey Miranchuk.
Believed to have spent much of the summer in his native Slovenia, Ilicic was reportedly back in Bergamo in late August, back training again – albeit on his own – before returning to full training with the club in early September. Speaking about him recently, Slovenian Federation president Radenko Mijatovic suggested that Ilicic is still battling with his “problems.”
Intriguingly, Mijatovic suggested that Ilicic’s difficulties began with the COVID-19 pandemic that, of course, struck Bergamo, home of Atalanta, especially hard. People who have worked with Ilicic, such as coach Bortolo Mutti who had him for a year at Palermo, says that the Slovenian is indeed a “sensitive, if exceptionally talented player.”
Mutti says that with Ilicic, you could tell from his first few touches of the ball in any game as to just how his game was going to go. If he started badly, he would become discouraged and disappear from the game, despite his immense talent. In truth, to the outside observer, Ilicic has often seemed inconsistent.
There is little doubt that his absence from the PSG game cost Atalanta dearly. Remember, this is the guy who scored all four Atalanta goals in their previous Champions League game, a 4-3 win in Valencia last March.
As it was, Atalanta ended up playing their biggest-ever game without their two most talented players – Ilicic and Argentine Alejandro Gomez. Whilst Ilicic had dropped himself out, the
His unhappy summer seems all the more mysterious because it happened at the very moment when he and his club were touching unprecedented heights
influential Gomez was out there on the pitch but clearly not in good physical condition, in the end having to come off in the second half.
Without the two players who could best hold on to possession and help Atalanta weather the storm of a second half when they were literally run off their feet by a dominant PSG, Atalanta suffered badly. Even if it was only in time added on that PSG staged their late comeback for their 2-1 win, there was a seeming inevitability about the demise of the exhausted Atalanta.
As for Ilicic, his unhappy summer seems all the more mysterious because it happened at the very moment when he and his club were touching unprecedented heights.
We know too well the tragedy that strikes some players who fail to adjust to life after football, but that is not the case of Ilicic, whose problems hit him even as he rode the crest of a winning wave. So here is hoping that he re-finds his way and that shortly he will once again dazzle and delight us on the field of play. Good luck to him.