Not for the first time, Papu Gómez’s biceps stole the show. The Atalanta captain has made headlines all season with his unconventional armband designs. First there was the Mother’s Day tribute, then the Spiderman logo, the Holly & Benji cartoon and, most famously, a celebration of Pro Evolution Soccer’s original Master League XI. As Serie A returned to action on Sunday, he unveiled a new design, inspired by the movie Frozen.

It was chosen to mark his daughter Constantina’s second birthday, with her face appearing alongside those of Anna, Elsa and Olaf. But he might unintentionally have also captured the spirit of the footballing moment. Frozen was a fitting theme for a weekend when one game – Pescara v Fiorentina – was snowed off, while the status quo at the top of the table was perfectly preserved.

Juventus, Roma, Napoli, Lazio and Milan all won – even if some of them did make hard work of it. Napoli required a 95th-minute goal from Lorenzo Tonelli to squeeze past Sampdoria. Milan failed to puncture Cagliari’s defence – which had previously conceded 42 times in 18 games – until the 88th.

Gómez’s Atalanta began the weekend just behind them, in sixth place. Rarely has this club flown higher; the 53 Serie A points that they earned in 2016 were their most ever in a calendar year. But the build-up to Sunday’s game at Chievo was overshadowed by news that the midfielder Roberto Gagliardini was to be sold to Internazionale.

The 22-year-old only broke through into a regular first-team role at the end of October, but with his long limbs and powerful stride had already drawn comparisons to Paul Pogba. Playing alongside the similarly dynamic Franck Kessié, Gagliardini had helped to propel Atalanta to seven wins in his eight starts – a run that included triumphs over Napoli and Roma.

Nobody in Bergamo wanted to see him depart so soon, but Inter refused to take no for an answer. A reported transfer fee of close to €28m (£24.3m) would represent an exceptional return on a player developed by Atalanta’s own academy.

Still, with Kessié away representing Ivory Coast at the Africa Cup of Nations, they had effectively lost two-thirds of their starting midfield. Gagliardini had been training apart from the rest of the squad ahead of his anticipated move, but as it became clear that nothing would be settled before Sunday, the manager Gian Piero Gasperini told reporters that he might select the player to face Chievo anyway.

Perhaps it was a glance at Gómez’s armband that finally persuaded him to Let It Go. Instead of Gagliardini, the manager chose another homegrown player, the 21-year-old Alberto Grassi, for a first-ever start in midfield. It turned out to not really matter as Atalanta raced to a 4-1 win.

Grassi himself struggled, collecting an early yellow card and otherwise failing to impose himself on the game before being subbed in the second half. But this was a day for Gómez to remind us that his team’s successes this season should not solely be attributed to bright young things.

Set to turn 29 next month, Gómez is hardly getting set to collect his pension, but he is one of the oldest regulars in Gasperini’s starting XI – as well as the shortest, at a shade under 5ft 5in. He might also be the single most important player in the side, pulling the strings from his position just behind the attack.

Gómez opens the scoring for Atalanta against Chievo. Photograph: Filippo Venezia/EPA

Gómez has described his own role as a “false second striker”, typically lining up just behind Andrea Petagna but with licence to roam out to either flank. It is a new dynamic for a player who has spent most of his career as a conventional winger, and he is the first to insist that Atalanta’s early-season struggles – they lost four of their first five games – were caused by the failure of himself and his team-mates to grasp the movements Gasperini required.

Increasingly, it is clear that the manager’s vision was a fine one. With his low centre of gravity, brilliant dribbling and endless roaming, Gómez has bamboozled opposing defenders in a way that would not have been possible if he were confined to one side of the pitch.

He did it again on Sunday, finding space inside the box to score simple goals twice in the first 25 minutes. Only a sharp save from Stefano Sorrentino stopped him from completing a first-half hat-trick and even then Andrea Conti was on hand to slot home the rebound. Sergio Pellissier pulled one back for Chievo before Remo Freuler grabbed Atalanta’s fourth.

Gasperini described it afterwards as one of his team’s best performances of the season. It was all the more impressive for the absences of not only Gagliardini and Kessié, but also brilliant the young centre-back Mattia Caldara, who was suffering with a fever. Atalanta recently agreed a deal to sell the latter player to Juventus – but not until 2018.

Gómez, too, has been the subject of transfer speculation. His whole career to date could be written as a tale of missed opportunities, with Inter, Atlético Madrid and Milan all close to signing him at different times, only for deals to fall through due to changes of manager or the excessive transfer fees demanded by his clubs.

There has been similar frustration on the international stage. Overlooked by Argentina ever since helping them to win the Under-20 World Cup in 2007, he obtained Italian citizenship this May only to subsequently find out that he was still ineligible to represent his adopted home. Fifa regulations require any player switching nation in this manner to hold passports for both at the time when they first represent either.

Gómez, though, is a glass half-full kind of guy. A quick glimpse of his social media accounts – packed with videos of him goofing around with his wife, Linda, or scything down his four-year-old son in a game of beach football – give a clear picture of a man who enjoys his life just fine.

That mindset ought not to be interpreted as a lack of seriousness about his profession. In a recent interview with Corriere della Sera, Gómez outed himself as a rarity among Argentinians in not admiring Diego Maradona. “He was a bandiera on the pitch,” Gómez said. “But he lived a life that had nothing to do with sport. I have other models: [Pablo] Aimar, [Juan Román] Riquelme and above all [Juan Sebastián] Verón: a true player, a man, a leader.”

He aspires to provide a similar example himself now to Atalanta’s youngsters. The tricky question is: how many will still be there by the time this transfer window closes?

Talking points

• Juventus set a new Serie A record by winning their 26th consecutive home game on Sunday. They blew away the cobwebs from the Supercoppa defeat to Milan by cruising to a 3-0 victory over Bologna, and could take particular satisfaction from seeing Paulo Dybala grab his first goal since October. The Argentinian had missed his penalty during the shoot-out in Doha, but converted confidently from the spot after Stefano Sturaro was brought down.

• It was actually the top seven teams that all won in Serie A, with Inter keeping pace behind Atalanta as well. The Nerazzurri were fortunate to take all three points against Udinese – they fell behind early and might easily have been three down before Ivan Perisic equalised from their first real chance There is encouragement to be taken from the ability to prevail without playing well, when it was so often the other way around in the recent past. One way or another, Inter have now won four on the bounce.

• Lazio were yet another team who left things late, Ciro Immobile finally breaking the deadlock in injury time after a previously frustrating afternoon at home to Crotone. Only once in their history (in 2012-13) have the Biancocelesti had more than their current 37 points at the midway stage of a 20-team Serie A season.

• It was a tale of two keepers at the Marassi as Wojciech Szczesny pulled off a series of impressive saves to help Roma defeat Genoa. Mattia Perin made one of his own for the home side early on but tore a cruciate ligament minutes later, and was seen weeping on the bench after he was helped from the field. It is a cruel blow for a player who had only returned from the same injury in August.

Results: Chievo 1-4 Atalanta, Empoli 1-0 Palermo, Genoa 0-1 Roma, Juventus 3-0 Bologna, Lazio 1-0 Crotone, Milan 1-0 Cagliari, Napoli 2-1 Sampdoria, Sassuolo 0-0 Torino, Udinese 1-2 Inter.