Roma let Kone's double slip away as Lautaro's late strike earns Inter a 2-2 draw at the Olimpico

Roma had the game wrapped up by the 36th minute and watched it slip away in barely half an hour. The final score was 2-2 at the Stadio Olimpico, with Manu Kone scoring a brace for the hosts and Lautaro Martinez answering with a double of his own for Internazionale, the second arriving in the 78th minute. It was the kind of match that only Serie A seems to produce, a clash between first and second place that ended without a winner.

The start could not have gone better for the home fans. Just five minutes in, Manu Kone popped up in the middle of the box to finish with his right foot off a headed pass from Nahuel Molina, making it 1-0 before Inter had barely touched the ball going forward. Roma kept dictating the pace through the first half hour, with Paulo Dybala testing his luck a few times without finding the target, until Kone struck again in the 36th minute: this time he fired home with his left foot from close range off a Gianluca Mancini cross to make it 2-0, a goal that stood after a VAR review.

With halftime approaching, Inter finally caught a break and made the most of it right away. In the final minute of the first half, a counterattack ended with Marcus Thuram setting up Lautaro Martinez, who finished with his left foot to pull Inter back into the game just before the break: 2-1 at the halfway point.

An equalizer born of persistence

In the second half, Inter took control of possession and began generating danger more consistently, while Roma made substitutions looking for fresh legs in midfield and up front. The game stayed open, with chances at both ends, until the decisive sequence arrived late on. In the 78th minute, following a corner kick, Inter strung together a series of rebounds inside the box: a Thuram shot was blocked, a Lautaro header struck the crossbar, an attempt from Manuel Akanji went wide, and then Yann Bisseck tried again before Lautaro Martinez pounced on the final rebound and finished with his right foot from the middle of the box to make it a definitive 2-2.

There were no more goals after that. Roma pushed for a third with substitutes Evan Ndicka, Niccolo Pisilli and Devyne Rensch, while Inter also turned to its bench with Petar Sucic, Carlos Augusto and Luis Henrique, but the scoreboard did not move again before the final whistle.

What the numbers say

The stat sheet was tightly contested, which makes sense given how the match unfolded.

According to our estimate of xG generated in the match, calculated from shot locations, Internazionale finished with 3.133 expected goals compared to Roma's 2.376. That number helps explain how the game played out: despite trailing by two goals, Inter created more cumulative danger over the full 90 minutes, especially during that late flurry of shots that produced the equalizer.

Our pre-match preview had given Roma a 36% chance of winning, with 27% for a draw and 37% for Internazionale, projecting expected goals of 1.47 for the hosts and 1.50 for the visitors. The final result, a high-scoring draw, ended up being the least likely of the three outcomes in our projection, and the 2-2 scoreline blew past the 2.96 total goals we had anticipated.

Where things stand in the table

Heading into this matchday, Roma and Internazionale arrived as Serie A's top two, both with 13 points, 4 wins and 1 draw from 5 games played, though with different goal differences: 11 in favor for Roma against 7 for Inter. The draw at the Olimpico leaves that points tie intact between the two, in a table where Cagliari remains close behind with 12 points. Neither side could pull away from the other, and that fact, more than the scoreline itself, may end up being the most significant takeaway from the afternoon at the Olimpico.