Mihajlovic returns as Bologna and Lazio share points in Dall’Ara thriller

Date: 6th October 2019 at 4:54pm
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STADIO RENATO DALL’ARA (Bologna) – Bologna welcomed Sinisa Mihajlovic back to their bench on Sunday afternoon in an action-packed 2-2 draw with his former club Lazio as the hosts also celebrated their 110th anniversary.

Mihajlovic’s men twice led and temporarily had a man extra in the second half before themselves going down to ten, but when all the chaos came to an end there was nothing separating the two sides, even with Lazio being awarded a late penalty.

The Rossoblu, wearing their new green third shirt on Sunday to mark their anniversary, started brightly and although they spent the early exchanges probing Lazio’s backline it took them until midway through the half to open the scoring. Riccardo Orsolini worked space well on the right and stood up a ball that Ladislav Krejci arrived to head home as Luiz Felipe was caught ball watching beneath the crossbar.

But Lazio levelled immediately through Ciro Immobile as Bologna took their turn to sleep on the job. Completely uncontested, the forward cut onto his right foot inside the box and his near-post strike beat Lukasz Skorupski, despite it not being the most fierce of efforts.

Eight minutes later though the lead was restored through Rodrigo Palacio, finally scoring his first home goal at the Dall’Ara in his third season and 32nd home appearance. Krejci came in from the left and curled a low strike off Thomas Strakosha’s post which fell back to the Argentinian. Calm, almost overly so, Palacio controlled and allowed the Albanian to recover his position but his close-range prod managed to squirm its way over the line anyway.

The first-half drama kept coming and Immobile again capitalised on some slack home defending to achieve parity once more. A quick exchange of Lazio passes saw Luis Alberto slip him through and his shot ricocheted off Danilo Larangeira to beat Skorupski

Mattias Svenberg looked to have put Bologna back in front early in the second half but his goal was chalked off for offside. Lazio’s task then became all the more difficult when Lucas Leiva was dismissed for a second yellow card with 30 minutes still to play.

This was never a game that spent long out of balance though and numerical parity was restored about ten minutes later courtesy of Gary Medel. Joaquin Correa raced through towards Skorupski’s goal and the Chilean pulled him back. Oddly initially shown a yellow card by Daniele Orsato, the Biancocelesti players protested until the referee checked VAR and a brief look at the pitch-side monitor allowed him to right his wrongs and upgrade the card to red.

Orsolini came within inches of tapping in from a yard out but he arrived a split second too late to make contact with Krejci’s drive across goal.

Correa had a big chance late on but Skorupski did well to prevent it from slipping through his legs.

Palacio looked to have undone his earlier good work by sloppily conceding a penalty in the dying minutes but Correa powered his spot kick off the crossbar.

 

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