Frosinone's front-footed 3-5-2 overwhelms a threadbare Lecce
A 5-1 demolition of Lecce lifts Frosinone into sixth, with their reshaped back three and direct transitions exposing a visiting side stripped by suspension and injury.
Frosinone are no longer a curiosity. Beating Lecce 5-1 at the Stadio Benito Stirpe moved them into sixth place in Serie A, a single point off Milan, and gave the promoted club the best start to a top-flight season by a newly-promoted team on record, level with Juventus's return campaign in 2007, Football Italia reported.
The result followed last weekend's 4-4 draw at Atalanta, and the pattern was similar: Massimiliano Alvini's side conceded chances but kept finding the net at the other end, scoring five times from a mixture of open play, a penalty and a set-piece move.
A reshuffled shape still found its rhythm
Lecce arrived already stretched. Kialonda Gaspar was suspended after a red card in the loss to Juventus, while Santiago Pierotti, Ivan Ilic, Lassana Coulibaly and Medon Berisha were all unavailable through injury, per Football Italia. The warm-up injury to Willem Geubbels forced a late switch to a back five, with Paco Esteban summoned into an unfamiliar 3-5-2.
That kind of enforced reorganisation rarely holds up against a team playing with the structure and conviction Frosinone showed. A back three needs its wing-backs to compress space quickly in transition, and Lecce had no time on the training ground to coordinate those rotations. Frosinone exploited exactly that gap, working the ball into wide areas before Fares Ghedjemis squared for Matteo Cichella to finish low past Wladimiro Falcone inside 25 minutes.
Transition goals did the damage
The second goal came from a sequence that showed how thin the margins were. Omri Gandelman went down under challenge from Giacomo Calò, play continued, and Frosinone broke forward with Giorgi Kvernadze cutting inside Jamil Siebert. The contact was minimal, but the referee pointed to the spot, and Calò converted himself for 2-0 at the break — a decision Football Italia described as a soft award that nonetheless stood.
Frosinone's third underlined their capacity to turn defence into attack in a single move. Antonio Raimondo launched the sequence with a long pass from inside his own half, sent Kvernadze away down the left, then sprinted the length of the pitch to finish the return ball from ten yards. It was his eighth league goal of the season, putting him level with Monza's Gustavo Varela at the top of the scoring charts.
Substitute Daniel Birligea needed only two minutes to add a fourth, converting Romano Schmid's pass before an initial offside flag was overturned by VAR, which confirmed he was level with the ball when it was played. Lecce's consolation arrived when Olaf Gorter won the ball from Anouar El Azzouzi and released Joel Monteiro, who curled a finish into the far corner on the counter — a rare moment of Lecce doing to Frosinone what Frosinone had spent the afternoon doing to them.
Birligea completed the scoring with the last kick of the match, turning in a short corner pulled back by Kvernadze from the byline, a set-piece variation that found space Lecce's reorganised back line simply did not have bodies to cover.
What sixth place actually means right now
Frosinone's rise has to be read against a Serie A table still being shaped at the top. Inter returned to the summit with a 2-0 win at bottom club Venezia settled by two late own goals, drawing level with Lazio on 25 points ahead of Saturday's Milan derby, the Guardian reported. Milan, meanwhile, suffered their first league defeat of the season, beaten 4-2 at San Siro by Bologna after a Samuel Mbangula hat-trick, despite a double from Alphadjo Cisse.
That context matters for Frosinone's position. Being one point behind a Milan side that has now dropped its unbeaten record is a genuine marker of form, not a quirk of an early-season table that will correct itself. Alvini's team have built their run on scoring heavily rather than defending tightly, conceding four at Atalanta and one here, which suggests the next test of this Frosinone side will come against opponents who can match their attacking tempo rather than ones depleted by suspensions and injuries, as Lecce were on this occasion.
Lecce, by contrast, now have to find defensive solutions without several first-choice players, and the pace at which Frosinone cut through their improvised back three will concern a coaching staff already short of options in midfield and defence.