Parma stuns Genoa with stoppage-time winner for agonizing 2-1 comeback at the Tardini

Parma went ahead almost out of nowhere and then grabbed the goal that mattered most with the clock already deep into six added minutes. The final score, 2-1 for Parma over Genoa at the Ennio Tardini, hands the home side a win that looked to be slipping away right when it seemed all but secured.

Carlos Cuesta's side opened the scoring in the 37th minute when David Romero curled a right-footed strike from outside the box just inside the left post, finishing off a pass from El Bilal Touré. It was Parma's best moment in a first half in which Genoa had seen more of the ball without turning it into clear danger: Junior Messias tried his luck twice from distance and Leo Østigård headed one just wide of the frame, but Parma went into the break in front.

In the second half, Daniele De Rossi's side found the reward for its pressure. In the 69th minute, a counterattack ended with a through ball from Lorenzo Colombo, who had just come on, setting up Milutin Osmajic to finish with his right foot from outside the area and level things at 1-1. The equalizer looked fair given Genoa's dominance in possession and chances, but Parma still had one more move to make.

Ten minutes later, another counterattack flipped the script: Nesta Elphege, who had replaced David Romero, set up Pontus Almqvist, also a fresh substitute for El Bilal Touré, to finish left-footed from the center of the box and make it a final 2-1 in the 79th minute. Genoa pushed hard in the closing stretch, with a Vítinha effort clipping the crossbar in the 88th minute and another attempt from him in stoppage time, but the equalizer never came.

What the numbers say

The stats confirm Genoa was the team that carried the game's tempo, though it wasn't enough to get points on the board. Parma, by contrast, made the most of the little it created.

The estimated xG based on the match's shots comes out close: 0.86 for Parma against 0.75 for Genoa, a figure that reflects just how tight the contest was despite the gap in possession and total shots.

The preview published ahead of kickoff gave Parma a 32% chance of victory, 35% for a draw and 33% for Genoa, with expected goals of 0.98 for the home side and 0.99 for the visitors. The result ended up favoring the less likely outcome by that projection, something neither the possession split nor the shot count suggested until the very end.

What the match means for the standings

In the league table, Parma moves to 4 points with a record of one win, one draw and three losses in five matches played, sitting in the lower half of the standings. Genoa, for its part, remains on just 1 point after the same number of games, with a record of one draw and four losses, at the bottom of the table. The gap between the two sides in the standings is just 3 points, something this Sunday's result only confirms: these are two teams in urgent need of points.

For Parma, the second-half substitutions proved decisive: both the goal and the assist for the second score came from players who entered off the bench. For Genoa, the feeling of having deserved more based on the run of play goes, once again, unrewarded in the standings.