Torino defeated Monza 3-2 at the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino on Friday evening, and the margin was built almost entirely in a 33-minute stretch spanning both halves — three goals that turned a one-goal deficit into a cushion Ignazio Abate's side never relinquished.
The match's shape was set by two moments separated by eight minutes. Torino midfielder Kian Fitz-Jim opened the scoring in the 39th minute, assisted by forward Giovanni Simeone, giving the home side the lead they had been pressing for. Monza responded almost immediately after the restart: Gustavo Varela, the Monza forward, equalised in the 47th minute to level the contest and shift momentum toward the visitors. That goal, arriving so quickly after half-time, suggested Monza's coach Ivan Jurić had made adjustments at the break — and for a brief period, the away side looked the more likely to go ahead.
What followed was shaped by Abate's decision to introduce Gvidas Gineitis in the 51st minute for Rolando Mandragora. The Torino midfielder made his presence felt almost immediately: in the 61st minute, Gineitis provided the assist for Rafik Belghali to restore Torino's lead. Ten minutes later, Abate made three further substitutions simultaneously — Daniel Bragança, Nathan Patterson, and Sandro Kulenović all came on — and within 60 seconds of those changes, Torino midfielder Nikola Vlašić scored to make it 3-1 in the 72nd minute. The match was, at that point, effectively decided.
Vlašić is the natural focus here. His goal in the 72nd minute was the decisive one — the strike that produced the final margin before Monza's late consolation — and it arrived at the precise moment when Monza might have expected the game to open up again following Torino's triple substitution. Instead, Vlašić converted the opportunity to put the result beyond reasonable doubt. His contribution sits within a Torino side that has now won three consecutive matches, having taken nine points from those three games.
Monza's regret is partly of their own making and partly a matter of timing. Jurić's side arrived having won four goals against Cagliari just four days earlier, and they showed enough in the opening exchanges to suggest that confidence was genuine. Varela's equaliser was a legitimate threat realised. But the visitors' inability to build on that moment — to press the advantage in the minutes after the 47th — allowed Torino to reassert control through the substitution of Gineitis, a change that paid dividends within ten minutes. The own goal by Nathan Patterson deep in stoppage time, at 90+4', gave the scoreline a slightly misleading closeness: by then, Monza's double substitution in the 79th minute, bringing on Cyril Ngonge and Patrick Cutrone, was chasing a game already lost.
The form context sharpens the significance. Torino came into this fixture having won two of their previous three matches without defeat, and they now move to three consecutive wins from three — a sequence that represents the most concentrated period of consistency in their recent campaign. Monza's trajectory runs in the opposite direction: having won two of their last three before this fixture, they now drop to one win from their last three, with two defeats in that window. The 4-0 victory over Cagliari that preceded this trip to Turin now looks like an outlier rather than a turning point.
A match that briefly threatened to belong to Monza, settled instead by a substitution, a quick double, and a midfielder who arrived off the bench to change it.