Seven minutes in, and one disallowed goal already
Bologna thought they had struck first. Seven minutes in, Ferguson took a quick free-kick, Theate finished the move, and the Maradona went quiet.
Then VAR took a look. Offside. No goal.
Take one goal away that early and it rarely ends well for the side that had it chalked off. Bologna never looked the same after that.
Napoli went on to win 1-0.
Try it for $0.99.
Lobotka, the last man you expect to see in the box
You have to remember what Stanislav Lobotka is on a football pitch. A midfielder who sees a ton of the ball, keeps it moving, plays it simple. Not a goalscorer. Hardly ever in the opposition box.
On Sunday, he was there.
66th minute. Favasuli, busy on the right, pulls it back. Lobotka arrives on the run and sweeps it home. The finish of a player who had spotted the opening two seconds before everyone else.
Before that, Napoli had pushed and pushed without finding the breakthrough. Kevin De Bruyne and Rasmus Hojlund both went close in the first half. In the end, it was the least flashy man on the pitch who decided it.
Bologna never got back into it
After the goal, not much happened. Bologna had 24 minutes to find an equaliser and managed just one shot on target, in the 86th minute through Mbangula. A tame effort, straight at Vanja Milinkovic-Savic.
Napoli saw it out. Not in style. Just well enough.
Six points from their first three Serie A games. The kind of Sunday that won’t make many end-of-season montages, yet still counts exactly the same as the rest.
Bologna leave with something else: the sense that they spent almost the whole match a goal down, even before the whistle had gone.
Catch the rest of our football news on the MathODDS site and app
in your pocket.
Real-time notifications & alerts
Leave a Reply