Parma beat Catania 2-0 at home in the Coppa Italia first round, and the match was settled entirely within the first thirty-five minutes — both goals belonging to the same man, both arriving before Domenico Toscano's side had time to recalibrate.
The opener came in the nineteenth minute, when Parma forward Simone Lontani converted to give Carlos Cuesta GarcÃa's side the lead. Catania had barely absorbed that blow when Lontani struck again on thirty-five, this time with El Bilal Touré — Parma's forward deployed in a front line alongside Lontani — providing the assist. A two-goal cushion before the interval, built without recourse to a penalty or an own goal, is a particular kind of authority: it demands a response the trailing team must manufacture from scratch rather than recover through fortune. Catania could not manufacture one.
Lontani is the obvious focal point. Two goals in sixteen first-half minutes, the second arriving from a Touré assist that suggested a functional combination between the two forwards, and Parma's coaching staff saw enough to withdraw him in the seventy-seventh minute — a substitution that reads as management rather than emergency, the work already done. The double came without a penalty and without any help from the opposition's defenders, which makes it a clean account of Lontani's contribution. For a Coppa Italia opener, that is precisely the kind of statement a forward needs to make.
Catania's evening was shaped by the scoreline before they could impose any structure on it. Toscano's side collected two yellow cards — one in the thirty-third minute, one deep in first-half stoppage time — and made four substitutions at half-time and in the sixty-third minute, a wholesale reshaping that signals the original plan had been abandoned. The Catania XI included attacking options in Bruzzaniti, Cicerelli, and Leonardi, but none of them registered in the goals column, and the away side finished the match without a goal to show across their only recorded fixture in this data window.
Parma's form picture offers useful context. Across their last five matches — a span that crosses four Serie A fixtures and this Coppa Italia tie — Cuesta GarcÃa's side collected six points from a possible fifteen, with three defeats alongside two wins. The last three matches tell a sharper story: six points from nine, with three goals scored and only one conceded. This Coppa Italia result is the second consecutive win in that tighter window, following a 1-0 Serie A victory against Sassuolo in May. The defensive numbers in that last-three stretch — one goal against across three matches — suggest a team that has tightened its structure after a difficult mid-season run. Franco Carboni, introduced in the eighty-third minute, collected a yellow card in stoppage time, the only disciplinary note on Parma's side of the ledger.
Lontani's brace settled this tie so early that the second half became an exercise in rotation rather than contest — and that, more than the scoreline itself, is what Parma will carry into the next round.