Studies tell us school bullies have often been victims of bullying themselves. Watching Atalanta humiliate Udinese on Sunday afternoon, it was tempting to wonder whether something similar might apply to football teams.

Beaten 5-1 by Manchester City in midweek, the Bergamo club returned home to thrash their next opponent 7-1. They even allowed Udinese the illusory joy of scoring the first goal, just as they had experienced at the Etihad.

It was an astonishing result. Udinese arrived boasting the stingiest defence in all of Serie A, having conceded just six times in their previous eight games. A first-half red card to the defender Nicholas Opoku contributed, but Atalanta dazzled with the relentless tempo and directness of their attacks. Gian Piero Gasperini ended the day fending off journalists’ questions about whether his team could challenge for the title. They sit just three points off first place, after Juventus, Internazionale and Napoli drew, and have outscored every team except City (who have played a game more) across Europe’s top five leagues.

This weekend, however, Gasperini had to share the limelight with his own coaching protege. Thiago Motta could not coax seven goals out of Genoa in his first game. But he did achieve something no other Serie A manager had ever done before: sending on three substitutes, who all went on to score.

Trailing 1-0 at home to Brescia, Motta introduced Kevin Agudelo at half-time, Goran Pandev after 58 minutes and then Christian Kouamé in the 65th. The last of those players hit the crossbar within seconds of entering the pitch. The first of them equalised a few moments after that.

Signed from the Colombian club Atletico Huila in the summer, Agudelo had never made an appearance under Genoa’s previous manager, Aurelio Andreazzoli. Motta’s decision to offer him a debut here was justified as the player swept home a confident finish from Andrea Pinamonti’s cut-back inside the box. Kouamé scored next, meeting Paolo Ghiglione’s cross with a spectacular scissor-kick. Their final goal came on the counter, Pandev exploiting the space left by an exhausted and overstretched Brescia team as he cut across Ales Mateju to bury a shot into the far corner.

This was a hugely important win for Genoa, who had begun the weekend second from bottom. They had taken just a single point from their final six games under Andreazzoli, and conceded 19 goals in eight matches overall. The mood at their Marassi stadium has been mutinous. Ultras left the northern stand empty for the first 10 minutes on Saturday, and a banner hung in that section warned that they could stay away for a whole season in future if nothing improved.

Even the appointment of Motta had been divisive. Although popular during his time at Genoa as a player, his only coaching experience was a single season in charge of Paris Saint-Germain’s Under-19s. He had been ridiculed in the Italian press last year for supposedly suggesting that his team’s formation could be described as a 2-7-2, with the goalkeeper joining midfield.

In reality, Motta’s words had been grossly misinterpreted. Asked which formation he preferred during an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, he sought to make the point that the numbers do not really matter – since modern football is a fluid game in which a team must constantly readjust its shape.

To reinforce his point that formations themselves were abstract, Motta proposed that you could read a 4-3-3 formation as a 2-7-2 if you read it from left to right (ie: two players in the wide left zone, seven in the middle, two in the right) instead of going from back to front. None of which stopped the papers from comparing him to Oronzo Canà, the central character from cult 1980s football coaching parody L’Allenatore nel Pallone, who proposed that his team line up in a 5-5-5.

Whether Motta is ready to manage at this level, only time will tell. Although his substitutions worked out gloriously against Brescia, it is also true his initial team selection had flaws – with Ivan Radovanovic looking lost after being drawn back from his usual spot in midfield to play at centre-back, and Pinamonti underwhelming as a lone centre-forward. Genoa had almost 65% possession in the first half, but took a total of just four shots.

Motta is not even fully qualified, and must continue to take courses at Coverciano in order to obtain his Uefa Pro licence. On the other hand, that may matter less in the long run than the insights he gained from working under the likes of José Mourinho at Inter and Carlo Ancelotti in Paris.

He won a treble with the former, as did Pandev. Asked about the experience of coaching a former teammate, Motta noted that the Macedonian has had no problem calling him “Mister” – the Italian equivalent to “Boss”.

It is Gasperini, though, that Motta cites as the greatest influence on his coaching ideas. “I learned so much from him,” he said after taking the Genoa job. “It is an honour to be in charge of the team where he used to manage me.” He would do well to follow in the footsteps of Gasperini, whose seven-and-a-half years in charge of Genoa – split across two stints – represent the most successful periods of the club’s recent history. No other manager has even made it through a complete season in charge of the club since it returned to Serie A in 2007.

For now, it would be enough for Motta simply to steer Genoa away from the relegation zone. To take a team that has often been bullied this season, and teach it how to fight back.

Talking points

• No new manager bounce, then, for Stefano Pioli at Milan. After drawing his first game, against Lecce, the Rossoneri followed up with a defeat to Roma, courtesy of two goals that felt so avoidable. Franck Kessié left Edin Dzeko unmarked at the back post for the opening goal, before Davide Calabria simply passed the ball straight to the striker – who moved it on, via a deflection, to Nicolò Zaniolo – for the winner.

• Ciro Immobile’s 89th-minute winner at Fiorentina was his 10th goal of this league season. Only three players have ever hit double figures after nine games before, and one of those was Immobile himself – in 2017-18. That said, it’s a mystery how this one was allowed to stand after the move began with what looked like an obvious foul by Jordan Lukaku on Riccardo Sottil.

• Interesting to note the different reactions of the front-runners’ managers to their respective draws. Carlo Ancelotti, as usual, sought to minimise the implications of a single result, saying he was happy with Napoli’s performance. Maurizio Sarri mostly had to field questions about his decision to rest a tired Ronaldo, but acknowledged some flaws in Juventus’s display, from a lack of ruthlessness up front to a passivity when in the lead. Antonio Conte, meanwhile, seemed to call for new signings, when he highlighted recent injuries and asserted his Inter squad did not have enough depth to cope with so many games in quick succession.