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Serie A: Bologna 3-2 Torino – Biraghi’s disaster debut seals thriller

Originally posted on Football Italia | By Peter Young | Last updated Feb 14, 2025 4:39 PM ET

A five goal thriller was settled by a last-minute own goal by debutant Cristiano Biraghi, who handed Bologna a 3-2 win at home against Torino in Serie A on Friday night.

Vincenzo Italiano welcomed a number of his first-choice defenders back into the starting line-up, including Sam Beukema, while Paolo Vanoli handed a first ever Serie A start to Italy U21 star Cesare Casadei, who joined in a permanent move from Chelsea in January.

Click here to read more about how the teams lined up.

Bologna thought they had earned a chance to put themselves ahead from the penalty spot following Benja Dominguez’s lay-off into the area 15 minutes in, but a lengthy VAR check ended with the penalty call being overturned.

The officials decided that Ndoye had stepped across and clipped Karol Linetty, rather than Linetty clipping Ndoye, and so the scores remained at 0-0.

The Switzerland international did brilliantly to send Bologna 1-0 ahead just a few minutes later, though. Tommaso Pobega won possession and fed his teammate, who took a heavy touch towards the byline, before squeezing past Vanja Milinkovic-Savic from an improbable angle.

Torino had a pair of chances on the 25 minute mark; first through Che Adams, who won a corner after a decent save from Lukasz Skorpuski, and another from Saul Coco from the resulting set-piece.

The Granata centre-back managed to put it wide from a yard or two out with an empty net in front of him, but the whistle eventually went for a foul against Torino, so it would not have stood even if it had been on target.

Torino fluffed their biggest chance of the first half 10 minutes before the interval. Che Adams did fantastically to beat Jhon Lucumi and keep the ball under his control before racing into the area, effectively two-on-one against Skorupski, but inexplicably decided to square it to Yann Karamoh, despite being at a better angle himself.

Karamoh slipped in the area, and the ball rolled behind him.

Fortunately for Torino, they were level with their next attacking move. This time it was Guillermo Maripan who broke into the area, and found Vlasic in the middle via an unfortunate touch from Emil Holm, which allowed the Croatian to bury past Skorpuski with his first touch.

Sebastian Walukiweicz was forced off just over five minutes into the second half, limping off with what looked like a potential hamstring injury before being replaced by Marcus Holmgren Pedersen.

Bologna again thought they should have had a penalty on the hour mark when Santiago Castro went down in the area, but replays showed that it was a very similar situation to the first penalty incident, as the Argentine was adjudged to have caught his defender, rather than the other way around.

Second-half substitute Eljif Elmas, who had only just come on a few minutes earlier, put the visitors ahead with two pieces of brilliant individual skill. He managed to nutmeg Beukema in the area before scooping the ball up and over Skorupski with his following touch for 2-1.

Bologna finally won a genuine penalty just shy of the 70th minute when Casadei attempted to clear the ball, but did not see Pobega behind him, and accidentally whacked the former Milan midfielder instead.

Ndoye took the ball away from Castro and stuck his penalty right into the side netting. It needed to be a perfect spot kick to beat Milinkovic-Savic, who had dived the right way and was close to getting his fingertips to it.

Though Ndoye had chances to secure his hat-trick, and Che Adams came close to putting Torino 3-2 up, it would be an own goal from debutant Cristiano Biraghi who settled the scores in the last minute of regular time.

Castro tried to feed Giovanni Fabbian into the area, but Biraghi tried to intervene and ended up slotting the ball into the bottom corner while presumably trying to put it the other side of the post for a corner.