Nobody expected this. Not after the way Cagliari have played lately. Not against Atalanta. Not in two minutes.
Paul Mendy had other ideas. Two goals inside eight minutes. Cagliari 2-0 up before the game had even started in any real sense. And somehow, despite Scamacca equalising twice in the final ten minutes of the first half, Cagliari held their nerve and won 3-2 through Gennaro Borrelli two minutes after the restart.
Three points. A lifeline in the relegation fight. A result almost nobody saw coming.
Atalanta arrived at Unipol Domus in seventh place with 54 points. Cagliari sat sixteenth with 36, having won just one of their last five league games. The hosts had lost seven of their last ten in all competitions and failed to score in five of those. The numbers pointed one way. The match went the other.
Mendy scored in the first minute. Not the fifth. The first. Cagliari pressed high immediately and caught Atalanta cold. Mendy’s finish was clinical — low, firm, past Carnesecchi before the goalkeeper had time to set himself. Old Trafford would have been loud. Unipol Domus was electric.
Then he did it again in the eighth minute. Same composure, same directness. Atalanta were still shaking off the opener when the second went in. 2-0 after eight minutes. It was chaos in the best possible way for the home crowd.
That should have been enough to settle the nerves. It wasn’t.
Atalanta regrouped. Gasperini’s side have too much quality to stay rattled for long and Scamacca was the man who dragged them back. He scored in the 40th minute to make it 2-1. Cagliari were starting to look shaky. Their passing became shorter, less direct. The pressure was building.
Then Scamacca scored again in the 45th minute. 2-2. Right before half time. All the work Mendy had done, all the atmosphere Cagliari had built, levelled out in the space of five first-half minutes by one player.
The dressing room at the break must have been tense for the home side. Two goals up and now level. Atalanta had the momentum. The stats reflected everything — Atalanta had 73% possession across the match and completed 744 passes at 86% accuracy compared to Cagliari’s 266 at 68%. They were the better team in large spells. Just not when it mattered.
Borrelli changed all of that in the 47th minute. Two minutes into the second half. He came on and immediately affected the game, firing the hosts ahead 3-2. The goal sent Unipol Domus into scenes. A substitute. A forward who did not even start. Came on, scored, gave Cagliari back the lead they had worked so hard to build.
From there it was about surviving. Atalanta pushed. They had the ball. They had the chances. Six shots on target to Cagliari’s four. An expected goals figure of 1.72 against Cagliari’s 1.51. The numbers suggest Atalanta should have levelled again.
They did not. Cagliari defended with everything they had. Tackles, blocks, bodies on the line, goalkeeper making saves when needed. It was the kind of defensive effort that earns you points when nobody expects you to get them.
Sacchi kept his cards in his pocket for the most part. The game was competitive without being dirty. Atalanta kept probing but could not find the breakthrough and Cagliari held the lead all the way to full time.
Mendy was the headline with two goals and an 8.3 match rating. Scamacca took his season tally to nine Serie A goals and still earned an 8.5 despite being on the losing side — that tells you how good he was in those two moments. But the real story was Borrelli. Came off the bench. Scored the winner. On a night when his club desperately needed someone to step up.
For Cagliari this result is more than three points. They had won just one of their previous ten league games. One. The run had been brutal and the gap to safety looked like it was growing every week. This changes the mood, at least for now. Every team around them in the bottom half will have noticed the scoreline.
Atalanta will be frustrated. They dominated long stretches, had the better statistics across nearly every metric, and still lost. That is football. Two goals in the opening eight minutes from a side that had struggled to score all month. Sometimes the numbers do not tell the story.
Gasperini’s side remain seventh with 54 points, still in the mix for European football next season. But they will need to be sharper than this in their remaining games.
For Serie A match reports and Italian football news, visit fawanews.org.uk. Full standings and fixtures are at the official Serie A website at legaseriea.it.
Cagliari 3-2 Atalanta Serie A, Round 34 | Monday, 27 April 2026 Unipol Domus, Cagliari | Referee: Juan Luca Sacchi (ITA)
Goals: CAG: Paul Mendy 1′, Paul Mendy 8′, Gennaro Borrelli 47′ ATA: Gianluca Scamacca 40′, Gianluca Scamacca 45′
Cagliari (3-5-2): Caprile; Zé Pedro, Mina, Rodríguez; Obert, Sulemana, Gaetano, Adopo, Palestra; Borrelli (sub on), Esposito
Atalanta (3-4-2-1): Carnesecchi; Kolasinac, Djimsiti, Scalvini; Zappacosta, Ederson, De Roon, Bellanova; Raspadori, De Ketelaere; Krstovic (Scamacca sub)
Half-time: 2-2
