Torino defeated Udinese 2-1 at the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino, and the margin was settled by a substitute who had been on the pitch for three minutes before scoring the winner. Ignazio Abate's side had entered the match with one win from their last five across all competitions; they leave it with a result that changes the texture of their early season.

The first half contained the match's most compressed drama. Torino midfielder Daniel Bragança put the home side ahead at the 36th minute, and Udinese responded almost immediately — Jürgen Ekkelenkamp levelling for the visitors at 43'. The equalizer arrived at a damaging moment for Torino: two minutes later, at the 45th minute, Ricardo Rodríguez was withdrawn and Ardian Ismajli introduced, a change that reshaped the defensive structure heading into the interval. Bragança himself — the man who had scored the opener — was then substituted at 54', alongside Gaetano Oristanio, with Emirhan İlkhan and Nikola Vlašić entering together. Abate was clearly dissatisfied with what he had seen and moved early and decisively to alter the game.

The decisive intervention came at the 64th minute, when Sandro Kulenović replaced Torino midfielder Che Adams. Three minutes later, Kulenović scored. The goal gave Torino a lead they would not surrender, and it completed a comeback that had looked uncertain for much of the second half. It was the kind of substitution that validates a coach's instinct in real time: a player introduced into a level game who immediately tips it.

Kulenović's goal is the story of this match. Torino had come in having won just once in their last five across all competitions, and their home form had been particularly difficult — a Coppa Italia defeat to Monza and a league loss to Roma at the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino in the weeks prior. The fact that the winning goal came from a substitute, three minutes after his introduction, underlines both the fragility of Torino's starting options in attack and the depth Abate has available when he chooses to use it.

Kosta Runjaić's Udinese arrive at this result carrying the weight of a sequence that has now produced four consecutive Serie A defeats. Their last three matches in the league have returned no points, no wins, and no draws. Ekkelenkamp's equalizer at 43' offered a moment of genuine hope — the visitors had fought back to parity and were level heading into the break — but the second half produced nothing. Udinese made three substitutions simultaneously at the 72nd minute, introducing Keinan Davis, Lazar Jovanović, and David Alaba, but the scoreline did not move again. Nicolò Bertola, who had come on at 60', collected a yellow card at 89' — a minor footnote to a frustrating afternoon. The visitors had conceded ten goals in their last four Serie A matches before this fixture.

For Torino, the form picture is cleaner now than it was a week ago. Across their last five matches in all competitions, they move to two wins, one draw, and two defeats. In Serie A specifically across the last four matches, they now show two wins, one draw, and one defeat — a meaningful improvement on the sequence they carried into this fixture. Udinese's corresponding Serie A four-match run now reads four defeats from four, with ten goals conceded and five scored.

A substitute who needed three minutes to change a match is the image Torino take from this afternoon.