‘Normalised the extraordinary’

Gianluca Scamacca’s brace and Mario Pasalic’s strike secured a fantastic win at Anfield for the Serie A side, who became only the third overseas team to win two away matches against Liverpool in European competition.

“They’ve normalised the extraordinary,” Horncastle told TNT Sports.

“They’ve had big results before; they came here before and won in Covid [2-0 in the 2020/21 UEFA Champions League group stage], when they didn’t have their own fans.

“That’s why I think it’s particularly special tonight. But they’ve been to Amsterdam, they’ve beaten Ajax, they came within seconds of knocking out PSG and reaching the Champions League semi-finals; the only reason they didn’t do that was because they used all their subs.”

Horncastle spoke in more detail about Gian Piero Gasperini and emphasised the 66-year-old’s wide-ranging impact on Italian football.

“This is probably the most influential Italian coach in the last 15 years, because if you look at Serie A at the moment and up and coming managers, they all played under him,” he explained.

“Thiago Motta, [Raffaele] Palladino, Ivan Juric, they all played under him and his style. That back three he kind of made fashionable again when he brought Genoa up in 2006/07; that’s something which inspired [Antonio] Conte to change [in his teams], as he always used to play 4-4-2.”

Horncastle believes Gasperini should be touted for the biggest jobs in European football, with impending vacancies needing to be filled at Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Barcelona.

He added: “There is a big vacancy here [at Liverpool] in the summer and Gasperini doesn’t get talked about. In over eight years he has punched above his weight in terms of resources.

“I think he should be in the conversation for all of these jobs; Gasperini was burnt in the past when he went to a big job, he went to Inter, who didn’t back him.

“At Atalanta, he knows he’s onto a good thing; he’s in his sixties, he knows the grass isn’t greener on the other side.

“He’s got a very good contract; he’s incentivised to stay here. But at the same time, we’ve spent the last six weeks talking about [Xabi] Alonso coming here, [Ruben] Amorim coming here – this guy beat Amorim home and away, and went four games against him unbeaten. He’s shown he can build and rebuild teams.”

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