Torino defeated Palermo 2-1 at the Stadio Olimpico on Sunday afternoon in Serie A, and record a third consecutive home win of the season.
On his 150th Serie A appearance, Maxi Lopez gave the Granata a first-half lead and provided the assist for a wonderful Marco Benassi strike, with Giancarlo Gonzalez netting for the visitors.
After losing at Chievo on Wednesday night, coach Giampiero Ventura received the ideal response from his Torino players to return to winning ways in Serie A.
Despite controlling the majority of the opening 45, the hosts had little more than a tame Fabio Quagliarella effort on 10 minutes and nearly fell behind.
On 40 minutes Palermo striker Aleksander Trajkovski sent a wonderful curling free-kick towards Daniele Padelli’s goal, only to see the ball canon of the angle of crossbar and post.
Shortly after Torino were ahead, Cristian Molinaro breaking into the box on the left, and his low cross was deflected into the path of Lopez who nodded in from close range.
Seconds of the restart it was 2-0, Benassi breaking into the Rosanero box to meet a lofted Lopez cross and send an angled volley looping over Stefano Sorrentino.
On 62 minutes the hosts made life difficult for themselves, Molinaro being sent-off for a second bookable offence and Lopez was sacrificed for defender Gaston Silva.
Within 10 minutes Palermo were back in the game, Gonzalez rising to meet a Franco Vazquez cross and directing his header past Padelli.
In the final minute Torino went down to nine men, substitute Joel Obi stupidly kicking-out at Vazquez and receiving a straight red card.
With four wins from their opening six games Torino will go into next weekend’s game at Carpi expecting to pick up another three points, however, after failing to taste victory since week two the Rosanero are in for another tough test when Roma visit Sicily on Sunday afternoon.
