Lecce came to the Arena Garibaldi and left with three points, winning 1-2 against a Pisa side that has now lost all five of its most recent matches. The result was shaped in a thirteen-minute corridor between the 52nd and 65th minutes — a sequence in which Lecce scored, Pisa levelled, and then Lecce scored again, the second time with a goal that would not be surrendered.
The opener arrived in the 52nd minute when Lecce midfielder Lameck Banda converted with an assist from Walid Cheddira, the Moroccan forward who had arrived in Tuscany as Di Francesco's most dangerous attacking option. Pisa responded quickly: Mehdi Léris, the home side's midfielder, equalised at 56 minutes to make it 1-1 and briefly suggested that Oscar Hiljemark's team might find something in a match they badly needed. They did not. Nine minutes after Banda's goal, Cheddira turned provider into scorer, finishing from a Santiago Pierotti assist to restore Lecce's lead at 65 minutes. Cheddira was booked almost immediately after — a yellow card at 66 minutes that spoke to the intensity of the moment — and was withdrawn at 71 minutes, his work already done. The goal stood as the winner.
Cheddira is the figure this match will be remembered through. The Lecce forward contributed both a goal and an assist, the two decisive actions arriving within thirteen minutes of each other and in the correct order: the assist that made it 1-0, then the goal that made it 2-1 after Pisa had levelled. His removal before the 75th minute, once the lead was restored, was a straightforward piece of game management by Eusebio Di Francesco's Lecce — protect the player, protect the result. Pierotti, who assisted the winner, was also booked late and substituted in stoppage time, suggesting Lecce's evening was not without its friction, but the three points were never seriously threatened after the 65th minute.
Pisa's problem was structural as much as tactical. Léris's equaliser gave the home side a foothold, but Hiljemark's team conceded again within nine minutes of scoring — a pattern that reflects a broader fragility. The four yellow cards Pisa accumulated, spread across different players and different phases of the match, pointed to a team under pressure and reacting rather than controlling. The five substitutions Hiljemark made, including the triple change at 70 and 81 minutes, were the moves of a coach searching for something that the personnel available could not provide. Pisa have now conceded nine goals across their last five matches while scoring only two.
That five-match run — zero wins, zero draws, five losses — is the context that makes this defeat more than a single bad evening. In the last three matches specifically, Pisa have collected no points and conceded five goals while scoring two. Lecce's trajectory reads differently: unbeaten in their last three, with five points from those matches and only two goals conceded. The win here was Lecce's first in their last five, but the unbeaten run across the most recent three fixtures suggests Di Francesco has stabilised something after the heavy defeats to Atalanta and Bologna earlier in April. Pisa and Lecce have now met twice in the available head-to-head record, and Lecce have won both times.
Walid Cheddira scored the goal that separated these two teams and assisted the one that preceded it — that is the sentence this match earns.