Atalanta are a club who have spent at least one season in Serie B during every decade since the 1940s and as recently as the 2000s were still very much what many would call a 'yo-yo club', having suffered three relegations and three promotions in the space of ten years.

Sixteen teams have won the Serie A and the preceding competition over the course of the last 127 years. Atalanta are not one of them. Only ten teams have spent more time in Serie A but a Coppa Italia win in 1963 was the only major trophy the Nerazzurri had won prior to the arrival of Gian Piero Gasperini in 2016.

Seventeenth and 13th finishes in the two seasons prior to his arrival were followed by a fourth place finish in Gasperini's maiden season at the club as his exciting style of play produced immediate results.

Seventh and a run to the Coppa Italia semi-final during his second campaign were followed by three third-place finishes and three seasons of Champions League football, where they reached the quarter-finals and round of 16 in their first two campaigns in Europe's premier competition.

Atalanta would not finish below eighth in Gasperini's nine seasons in charge and in 2024 they won the Europa League as Ademola Lookman's hat-trick gave them a 3-0 win over Bayer Leverkusen.

Gasperini left Atalanta this summer for Roma and the Blues will tonight face a side led by Raffaele Palladino in the Champions League.

‘I am in love with this club,' our Italian head coach Maresca revealed about Atalanta. 'The reason why is because watching it from far away, Atalanta it is a matter of pride for all us Italians, so I want to congratulate the whole club, the directors, who were trying to get the best out of Gasperini when he was here.

‘For us as Italians, from a football perspective, we didn’t have many reasons for pride [in recent years] and Atalanta was one of the few reasons for us to be proud. It proves what a great job they have done over the years.’

Maresca made his professional debut for West Bromwich Albion as a teenager but returned to his native Italy after 18 months and spent the next five years at Juventus, Fiorentina and a couple of loan spells at Bologna and Piacenza.

Six years in Spain, with one in Greece sandwiched in-between, were then followed by a final five years of playing back in Italy before his retirement in 2017 at the age of 37.

Maresca was asked how Serie A had changed since his playing days during the pre-Atalanta press conference.

He said: 'I think Serie A has changed a lot, from different points of view. The main one probably is in terms of tactical, now many teams they try to, not to copy, but they try to do something similar to what Atalanta has done in the last years with Gasperini.

'You can see most of the teams play five at the back, most of the teams try to play man-to-man everywhere - if you go to the toilet, they will follow you there, they follow you everywhere!

'But for sure in that aspect, it has changed a lot compared to when I was a football player.'

Like the Blues, Atalanta have won three, drawn one and lost one of their Champions League matches so far, meaning the Italians are in tenth place in the table, level on points with seventh-place Chelsea.

And Maresca said: ‘It is going to be an intense game, we know that. Under Raffaele Palladino, we can expect an aggressive team. They will want to try to implement their game and we will be ready for them.’

Maresca returns to Italy off the back of winning the Conference League and Club World Cup during his first season in charge of Chelsea.

The 45-year-old was asked how proud he was to be returning home as a world champion by one of the Italian journalists on Monday night.

'Yes, first of all it's always a pleasure to come back to my country, no doubt,' he began, 'and then, as you said, to come back in this moment as a head coach, but especially to represent, I have said many times, one of the biggest clubs in the world, like Chelsea, I feel very proud of that.'