Lecce won 3-2 at Sassuolo, and the margin was settled in the sixth minute of stoppage time when substitute Nikola Štulić, on the pitch for barely five minutes, converted an Omri Gandelman assist to end a match that had lurched between momentum shifts since the fourteenth minute.
The opening exchanges were defined by Walid Cheddira. The Lecce forward put his side ahead at 14 minutes, was answered by Sassuolo's Armand Laurienté — who levelled at 20 with a Pedro Felipe assist — and then restored Lecce's lead at 25 with his second of the evening, Lameck Banda providing the assist. Two goals in eleven minutes from the same striker, and Sassuolo's defensive shape had no answer to either. Three minutes after Cheddira's second, Sassuolo thought they had equalised through midfielder Kristian Thorstvedt, but VAR ruled the goal out for offside, leaving Fabio Grosso's side trailing 1-2 at the half-hour mark and unable to recover the momentum they had briefly seized.
The second half appeared to be moving toward a Sassuolo equaliser when Andrea Pinamonti, introduced from the bench at 63 minutes in place of M'Bala Nzola, headed the home side level at 82 with Ulisses Garcia supplying the assist. It was the kind of substitution that can reframe a match — Grosso had also brought on Luca Lipani, Darryl Bakola, and Cristian Volpato in the same window, reshaping his attacking options entirely. For eight minutes, Sassuolo held parity and the initiative seemed to have shifted.
Štulić arrived at 85 minutes as part of a double substitution by Eusebio Di Francesco's Lecce, replacing the booked Ylber Ramadani. Within six minutes of stoppage time, he had the ball in the net. Gandelman, himself a substitute introduced at 79, provided the assist. The goal that produced the final margin came from two players who had been on the pitch for a combined total of roughly twelve minutes — a detail that says something about Di Francesco's reading of the game's closing stages.
Sassuolo's evening was undermined by a sequence they could not fully control. Cheddira's brace arrived before the half-hour, and the disallowed Thorstvedt goal — correctly ruled out, but psychologically significant — meant Grosso's side spent the remainder of the first half chasing a deficit rather than pressing an advantage. The yellow card for Tarik Muharemović at 77 added administrative pressure at a moment when Sassuolo needed clarity. Lecce, for their part, accumulated four yellows across the match, but none of those bookings cost them a player, and Di Francesco's substitutions — Štulić and Gandelman in particular — proved decisive in a way Sassuolo's changes ultimately did not.
Sassuolo's form across the last three matches now reads one win, two defeats, three points, with five goals scored and five conceded — a side capable of beating AC Milan at home, as they did earlier this month, but equally capable of conceding a stoppage-time winner to a substitute making his first meaningful contribution of the evening. Lecce's last three matches tell a more coherent story: two wins and a defeat, six points, with the attacking output improving in each of the two victories. Di Francesco's side have collected eight points from their last five, and the manner of this win — absorbing Sassuolo's second-half pressure and then striking late — suggests a team with sufficient composure to see out difficult moments.
A month from now, this match will be remembered as the evening Štulić walked off the bench and broke Sassuolo's hearts in the ninety-sixth minute.