Bologna arrived at the Stadio Comunale Via del Mare having not won in five Serie A matches, and they left with three points โ the margin delivered by substitute Jay Enem's 75th-minute goal, which proved decisive after Lecce had briefly drawn level.
Raffaele Palladino's Bologna side took the lead through Riccardo Orsolini at 17', Nicolรฒ Cambiaghi providing the assist. It was the kind of opener that suited a visiting team content to absorb pressure and strike on the break, and for the next forty-odd minutes the scoreline held. Lecce's afternoon was complicated further by the loss of Ivan Iliฤ, who had been booked at 10' and was withdrawn at 36' โ an enforced reshuffle that disrupted Eusebio Luca Di Francesco's midfield shape before the half was done. A third yellow, to Youssef Maleh at 45+2', left the home side carrying disciplinary baggage into the interval.
The match turned twice in the space of eleven minutes after the hour. At 62', Di Francesco sent on two substitutes simultaneously โ Willem Geubbels and Konan N'Dri โ and the disruption to Bologna's rhythm was immediate. Two minutes later, Lecce forward Amar Fatah converted an equalizer assisted by Danilo Veiga, and the Stadio Via del Mare had its moment. Palladino responded with his own double change at 62', and it was one of those arrivals โ Bologna forward Jay Enem โ who settled the contest. Enem, on the pitch for barely thirteen minutes, converted at 75' from a Cambiaghi assist to restore Bologna's lead and, as it turned out, win the match.
Cambiaghi's contribution deserves the clearest accounting: the Bologna midfielder assisted both goals, the opener and the winner, making him the connective tissue of a victory that had looked uncertain for a long stretch of the second half. That Palladino trusted him through to the 81st minute โ when Federico Bernardeschi came on โ reflects how central Cambiaghi was to everything Bologna created going forward.
Lecce's defeat carries a particular sting because the equalizer arrived at a moment when the game was genuinely open. Three yellow cards, the early loss of Iliฤ, and the need to make substitutions all point to a side managing too many variables at once. The home team created enough to level but not enough to lead, and when Bologna's fresh legs found the decisive goal eleven minutes after Lecce's best moment, the pattern of the season reasserted itself. Across their last five matches including this one, Di Francesco's side have managed one win and four defeats, conceding twelve goals.
Bologna's form arc reads differently now. Coming into this fixture without a win in five and with two draws as the only points in their last three, Palladino's team moves to one win, two draws and two defeats across their last five โ a modest but meaningful shift for a side that had been drifting. The three points arrived in the most Bologna way possible: a goal conceded, a substitute producing the answer, and Cambiaghi threading it all together.
Lecce had the equalizer; Bologna had the winner. That sequence is the entire story of this match.