BERGAMO, Italy (AP) — Atalanta beat Roma 2-1 and secured a third-place finish in Serie A on Monday and a place in next year’s Champions League.
The victory moved the Bergamo club seven points clear of Juventus and Lazio with only two rounds remaining. The top four qualify automatically for next season’s Champions League.
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Roma's Bryan Cristante, third right, celebrates with his teammates after scoring his side's first goal during the Serie A soccer match between Atalanta Bergamo and AS Roma in Bergamo, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Stefano Nicoli/LaPresse via AP)
Atalanta's Lazar Samardzic, left, and his teammates celebrate their side's second goal during the Serie A soccer match between Atalanta Bergamo and AS Roma in Bergamo, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Stefano Nicoli/LaPresse via AP)
Venezia's Gaetano Oristanio celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the Serie A soccer match between Venezia and Fiorentina in Venice, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Paola Garbuio/LaPresse via AP)
Venezia's Fali Cande celebrates after scoring the opening goal during the Serie A soccer match between Venezia and Fiorentina in Venice, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Paola Garbuio/LaPresse via AP)
Venezia's Gaetano Oristanio, right, and Fiorentina's Marin Pongracic, left, challenge for the ball during the Serie A soccer match between Venezia and Fiorentina in Venice, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Paola Garbuio/LaPresse via AP)
Nigeria international Ademola Lookman put Atalanta ahead in the ninth minute with his 15th league goal.
Former Atalanta midfielder Bryan Cristante leveled with a header before halftime.
The clincher came from Ibrahim Sulemana.
All was not lost for Roma. The capital club was sixth, one point behind Juventus and Lazio.
Venezia beat Fiorentina 2-1 and took a giant step towards securing its Serie A status for another year.
It rose out of the relegation zone and into fourth-from-last place. The last three teams go down and with two matches left to play Venezia holds its destiny in its own hands.
It is a point above Lecce and Empoli, and its two final games are at Cagliari and at home to Juventus.
Fali Cande on the hour mark and Gaetano Oristanio eight minutes later put Venezia in the driving seat at Stadio Pierluigi Penzo. Rolando Mandragora pulled a goal back for the visitor with 13 minutes remaining.
The result was a massive blow to Fiorentina’s hopes of securing European football next season. It remained ninth, three places and four points outside the European spots.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Roma's Bryan Cristante, third right, celebrates with his teammates after scoring his side's first goal during the Serie A soccer match between Atalanta Bergamo and AS Roma in Bergamo, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Stefano Nicoli/LaPresse via AP)
Atalanta's Lazar Samardzic, left, and his teammates celebrate their side's second goal during the Serie A soccer match between Atalanta Bergamo and AS Roma in Bergamo, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Stefano Nicoli/LaPresse via AP)
Venezia's Gaetano Oristanio celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the Serie A soccer match between Venezia and Fiorentina in Venice, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Paola Garbuio/LaPresse via AP)
Venezia's Fali Cande celebrates after scoring the opening goal during the Serie A soccer match between Venezia and Fiorentina in Venice, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Paola Garbuio/LaPresse via AP)
Venezia's Gaetano Oristanio, right, and Fiorentina's Marin Pongracic, left, challenge for the ball during the Serie A soccer match between Venezia and Fiorentina in Venice, Italy, Monday, May 12, 2025. (Paola Garbuio/LaPresse via AP)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who as an essential member of the Grateful Dead helped found the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s and kept it alive through decades of endless tours and marathon jams, has died. He was 78.
Weir’s death was announced Saturday in a statement on his Instagram page.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” a statement on his Instagram posted Saturday said. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”
Weir joined the Grateful Dead — originally the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He would spend the next 30 years playing on endless tours with the Grateful Dead alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.
Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including “Sugar Magnolia,” “One More Saturday Night” and “Mexicali Blues.”
After Garcia’s death, he would be the Dead's most recognizable face. In the decades since, he kept playing with other projects that kept alive the band's music and legendary fan base, including Dead & Company.
“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” the Instagram statement said. "A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”
Weir’s death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member. Founding bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024. The band's other drummer, Mickey Hart, practically an original member since joining in 1967, is also alive at 82. The fifth founding member, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, died in 1973.
Dead and Company played a series of concerts for the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in July at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, drawing some 60,000 fans a day for three days.
Born in San Francisco and raised in nearby Atherton, Weir was the Dead's youngest member and looked like a fresh-faced high-schooler in its early years. He was generally less shaggy than the rest of the band, but he had a long beard like Garcia’s in later years.
The band would survive long past the hippie moment of its birth, with its ultra-devoted fans known as Deadheads often following them on the road in a virtually non-stop tour that persisted despite decades of music and culture shifting around them.
“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” Weir said when the Dead got the Grammys’ MusiCares Person of the Year honor last year. “Spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done.”
Ubiquitous bumper stickers and T-shirts showed the band's skull logo, the dancing, colored bears that served as their other symbol, and signature phrases like “ain't no time to hate” and “not all who wander are lost.”
The Dead won few actual Grammys during their career — they were always a little too esoteric — getting only a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and the best music film award in 2018.
Just as rare were hit pop singles. “Touch of Grey,” the 1987 song that brought a big surge in the aging band's popularity, was their only Billboard Top 10 hit.
But in 2024, they set a record for all artists with their 59th album in Billboard's Top 40. Forty-one of those came since 2012, thanks to the popularity of the series of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux.
Their music — called acid rock at its inception — would pull in blues, jazz, country, folk and psychedelia in long improvisational jams at their concerts.
“I venture to say they are the great American band,” TV personality and devoted Deadhead Andy Cohen said as host of the MusiCares event. “What a wonder they are.”
FILE - Bob Weir plays guitar with his band The Dead, formerly the Grateful Dead, at the Forum in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles, Calif. on Saturday May 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)
FILE - This undated file photo shows members of the Grateful Dead band, from left to right, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Brent Mydland, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Kennedy Center Honors recipients from left; filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary American rock band the Grateful Dead band members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann Bob Weir and blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist Bonnie Raitt, applaud at at the 2024 Kennedy Center Honors reception in the East Room of the White House, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta,File)
FILE - Bob Weir arrives at Willie Nelson 90, celebrating the singer's 90th birthday on Saturday, April 29, 2023, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. (Photo by Allison Dinner/Invision/AP,File)
FILE - Bob Weir of Dead & Company performs at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Manchester, Tenn. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP,File)
