Udinese are in deep crisisafter losing at home to Lecce and being met with a chorus of boos at the Bluenergy Stadium.
Watch every Serie BKT match live with LaB Channel on OneFootball: subscribe for just €9.99 a month!
A day to forget for the Friulian side, in what may have been Runjaic's last game in charge of Udinese. Even before kick-off, the mood around the club was far from calm... Imagine it now, after a crushing defeat to a direct rival.
For Lecce, meanwhile, this was their third league win, all coming against direct rivalsin the battle against relegation. Di Francesco's side may not be capable of troubling the big teams, but they certainly know how to hold their own against the smaller ones.
After an opening spell in which Udinese seemed intent on controlling the game, everything changed with Gaspar'sgoal in the 11th minute, following a corner. Udinese's defence stood motionless, Okoye could not keep it out, and the first grumbles came from the stands.
Then, from another corner in the 33rd minute, Lecce doubled their lead, and once again the lack of movement from Runjaic's playerswas striking, first for Tiago Gabriel's header and then for N'Dri'sclose-range finish. That effectively ended Udinese's game: they vanished from the contest and even risked a thrashing.
Only Geubbels' poor finishingspared the hosts an even heavier deficit, with the number 69 firing horribly wide when through on Okoye.
The second half was an entertaining, end-to-end affair. Lecce always looked capable of striking, while Udinese tried to find a way back into the game with few ideas and plenty of confusion. And in the 59th minute, they would have done just that, had Piotrowski not been half a centimetre offsideas he tapped in what could have made it 2-1.
A few minutes earlier, Geubbels had squandered another chance to finish the game off. The knockout blow eventually came four minutes from the end of normal time, when Siebertlaunched his run with a fierce interceptionnear halfway, raced forward alone and scored a stunning goal with the outside of his boot.
The response from the Bluenergy Stadium crowdalso deserves praise, with much of the ground rising to applaud Di Francesco's side. It ended with deafening boos for Udinese, now on five consecutive defeats, and one certainty: Runjaic's job has never looked more precarious.
This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.
