Frattesi scored with his first shot for Lazio, and then cleared one off his own goal line
Gennaro Gattuso’s first Serie A match as Lazio coach was heading nowhere until he sent on a midfielder who had signed ten days earlier.
Aug 25, 2026
Davide Frattesi had been on the pitch for a matter of minutes when Boulaye Dia slipped him the ball inside the Bologna area. He hit it first time past Lukasz Skorupski, and that was the game. Bologna 0, Lazio 1, in one of the two Monday-night matches that completed the opening round of Serie A.
It was Frattesi’s first shot of the match and his first appearance in the league for Lazio. Later in the game he was back on his own goal line, clearing an Eivind Helland effort away.
Gattuso needed this one
Gennaro Gattuso took charge of his first Serie A game as Lazio coach at the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara, and he arrived there with a Coppa Italia elimination already on his record. Lazio had gone out in the first round to Mantova, a second-tier side, which is the kind of result that follows a new manager around until he wins something.
He got the win, though not comfortably. Bologna finished with 59 per cent of the ball and 14 shots to Lazio’s 10, five on target against three, and Lazio still spent the closing stages defending their own box.
Domenico Tedesco was in the other dugout for his first competitive match as Bologna’s coach. His side shaded the first half for possession, in a 45 minutes that produced five yellow cards and very little football, and they had his assistant sent off for arguing with the officials from the touchline.
Mandas kept Bologna out twice
Christos Mandas made the save of the night three minutes into the second half, stretching to keep out a Jens Odgaard header from close range. Lazio had already had a goal disallowed by then, Dia finishing well around the half-hour only for the offside flag to go up.
Bologna’s best spell came after they went behind. Federico Bernardeschi curled a free-kick with his left foot that Mandas got fingertips to and turned onto the post. Not long after, Helland got a shot away from close range with the goal at his mercy, and Frattesi cleared it off the line.
For a match that finished 0-1 and looked like a stalemate for an hour, Bologna will feel they should have taken something from it. They had the chances late on. They did not have the finish.
Frattesi is back where he started
Frattesi joined Lazio on 14 August, on loan from Inter until the end of the season with an option to buy. He won a Scudetto at Inter, scoring injury-time goals against Hellas Verona and Udinese in the run-in, but he spent much of his time there coming off the bench, and the move to Rome was a chance to play.
He is also a Lazio boy. He joined their youth setup at six years old and captained their Giovanissimi side before crossing the Tiber to sign for Roma, which is the sort of detail Italian football never lets anyone forget. Ten days after signing, on his first league appearance for the club, he came off the bench and won them a game.
Lazio sit joint-seventh after matchday one. Bologna are joint-14th. Neither number means much in late August, but Gattuso has three points from a fixture that could easily have given him none, and that is a better start than his Coppa Italia exit suggested he was heading for.