Why Mateo Retegui Can Solve Luciano Spalletti’s Striker Issues

Gianluca Scamacca fell to the turf in agony, and Atalanta instantly knew it didn’t look good.

La Dea were playing Parma in a pre-season friendly in early August when Scamacca’s left foot got caught in the turf of the Ennio Tardini. The Italian crumpled to the ground and fear set in on what had been a pleasant Sunday evening. 

Scamacca had been expected to lead the line for Gian Piero Gasperini’s side once again after a very good first season in Bergamo. Within days it was confirmed that he had torn his ACL and surgery was required. He would be out for the next six months. 

Atalanta needed a new striker.

Who they turned to was perhaps one of the more surprising moves made last summer. Mateo Retegui was signed from Genoa for around €22m to replace Scamacca. This raised eyebrows.

Yes, Retegui had played for Italy at Euro 2024, but he hadn’t exactly sparkled in his first season in Serie A, scoring a mere seven league goals from 26 league starts for the Rossoblu. 

This wasn’t a frugal Genoa side either. Under Alberto Gilardino, Genoa scored 45 goals last season, outscoring half of the division. Yet Retegui’s contribution lacked in comparison to Albert Gudmundsson, who rattled in 14 goals and emerged as the club’s standout performer as they comfortably survived.

Moreover, Retegui was a different kind of striker to Scamacca: shorter, less powerful and not as technically deft. Therefore, the choice of signing the former Tigre and Boca Juniors man was a head-scratcher.

The deal for Retegui happened quickly. The 25-year-old was training with Genoa when the call came in that he had to leave. The deal was then signed, sealed and delivered within 72 hours, and he was flown to Germany ahead of Atalanta’s friendly with St Pauli.

Retegui was Atalanta’s third most-expensive transfer of all-time, and the pressure was on him to succeed from the start. With Scamacca injured and the club’s record signing, El Bilal Toure, failing to impress in 2023-24, he was given little margin for error.

He didn’t take long to win Gasperini and the fans over. Retegui scored twice and played a big role in another on the opening day of the season in the 4-0 win against Lecce down in Puglia. Another goal came in the 2-1 defeat by Torino; and a thumping header in the 3-2 win against Fiorentina. 

Just two months after leaving Genoa, Retegui found himself up against his old side. In a fixture that could be described as the ‘Gasperini Derby’, owing to how long he managed both, his current team tore his old one to shreds.

La Dea won 5-1 and Retegui scored a hat-trick. Two of the three echoed shades of Pippo Inzaghi; anticipating Ademola Lookman’s cross for the first and later showing instinctive centre-forward skills by following Ederson’s shot and converting the rebound after Pierluigi Gollini could only parry. 

Breaking records

Retegui has scored seven in seven; the best start made by a new singing at Atalanta since the arrival of Luis Muriel in 2019. Moreover, the Italy international has already matched his tally from at Genoa last season in just 477 minutes of football. 

The missed penalty against Arsenal in the Champions League  — and the subsequent rebound — has proven to be the only dark spot in an otherwise stellar start. His spot kick was poor and easily saved by David Raya, while his header — with the Arsenal goalkeeper still sprawled on the floor — should’ve been dispatched. It would’ve given Atalanta a famous win over their more illustrious opponents. Yet Retegui is far from the finished product, and he’s still learning.

The Argentine-born striker has added an extra dimension to Atalanta’s play. While Scamacca played almost as a nine-and-a-half, using his ability to drop deep and link-up the play, Retegui comes alive inside the box.

As a result, Gasperini’s side now cross more balls into the area per-game than last season and they touch the ball inside the penalty box more per-game, too. 

Retegui is more in the Inzaghi mould than Scamacca, highlighted in the fact that he touches the ball less per-game but finishes chances three metres closer to the goal.

This aspect of his game dovetails nicely with Lookman, who is technically better and faster than Retegui, allowing the former to roam out wide in search of the ball while the latter stays closer to goal. Retegui has already scored more headers for Atalanta (three) than Scamacca did in all of last season (two). 

The answer to Italy’s striker issues

With Scamacca out until the spring and the rest of Luciano Spalletti’s strikers out of form, the stage is set for Retegui to cement his place as Italy’s new No9.

He was initially called up to the Italy squad by a desperate Roberto Mancini in the dying months of his reign when the Azzurri needed a new striker in a post-Ciro Immobile and Andrea Belotti landscape and options were limited.

Retegui qualified for Italy through a Sicilian grandfather on his mother’s side and, the fact that Mancini turned to a player who at that point was playing for Tigre in Argentina, encapsulated the dearth of Italian forwards. It came as a surprise to many in Argentina, who didn’t consider Retegui at that level at that point.

The 25-year-old finished the 2022 Argentine Primera Division as top scorer with 19 goals, yet it’s one thing to star for a very small team in Argentina and quite another to be given a call-up to the then-European champions. But Retegui scored on his debut for the Azzurri in a 2-1 defeat by England, and followed it up days later with another goal in the win against Malta.

He was on the mark again against Belgium on Thursday night, and with Retegui in the form of his life under Gasperini, who’s praised the 25-year-old for his improvement since arriving in Bergamo, there’s every chance he could be Spalletti’s striker going forward. 

Italy’s history with Oriundi strikers hasn’t been particularly good, but a man from just outside Buenos Aires could buck the trend, and offer Spalletti that fox-in-the-box Italy hasn’t had since the days of Super Pippo.