The final two fixtures of Serie A Matchday 2 take center stage Monday, with Lecce hosting Roma and Atalanta welcoming Bologna. Three of the four sides in action are chasing perfect starts, looking to join Inter Milan, AC Milan, Juventus, and Lazio on six points from two games.
Roma’s Six-Game Win Streak Faces a Tricky Test at Lecce
Roma arrive in excellent form after a dominant 4-0 home win over Fiorentina on opening weekend. Donyell Malen continued his hot start in Italy with a clinical hat trick, all three goals set up by Paulo Dybala, while Niccolò Pisilli added a fourth late on. Gian Piero Gasperini’s side have now won six straight league matches dating back to the end of last season, and new signing Rodrigo Mora also impressed on his first competitive start, adding another attacking wrinkle to Gasperini’s options — summer arrival Santiago Castro, a €35 million buy from Bologna, also got minutes off the bench but didn’t make the same immediate impact. Lecce, for their part, opened with a win of their own, grinding out a 2-0 result at newly promoted Venezia despite being second-best for long stretches. Eusebio Di Francesco’s side have never opened a Serie A campaign with two straight wins, and the history against Roma specifically is brutal — Lecce have managed just three points from Di Francesco’s last 16 meetings with the Giallorossi. Despite history, Lecce have the pieces — and enough belief off their own opening win — to make this one far more competitive than the head-to-head numbers suggest.
Prediction: Lecce 1-1 AS Roma
Sarri Looks to Build Early Momentum Against a Struggling Bologna
Atalanta head into the evening in good shape. Maurizio Sarri’s first competitive matches in charge produced a 2-1 win over Sassuolo, with goals from Giacomo Raspadori and Nikola Krstović, followed by progression through the Conference League play-off against Hapoel Tel Aviv. Sarri does have some fresh selection concerns after Giorgio Scalvini picked up an ankle sprain in Europe, joining Isak Hien and Kamaldeen Sulemana on the sidelines, but the squad’s overall sharpness — three competitive matches deep already — should still count for something. Bologna, under new coach Domenico Tedesco, opened with a narrow 1-0 home defeat to Lazio despite generating better underlying attacking numbers, and they’ll need to find some early rhythm fast. The visitors did win 1-0 in Bergamo the last time these two sides met, a stat worth remembering given Atalanta’s recent home struggles against Bologna specifically, but this feels like a different Atalanta side than the one that lost that meeting.
Prediction: Atalanta 2-0 Bologna
Three teams enter Monday still chasing a perfect start to the season: Roma, Atalanta, and Lecce. If the predictions above hold, only Atalanta joins Inter Milan, AC Milan, Juventus, and Lazio at 2-0. A Lecce vs Roma draw would mean that Roma’s six-match win streak comes to an end, and Lecce’s own perfect start ends with it. Either way, Monday’s results should offer one of the clearer early signals yet about which sides are genuinely built to challenge near the top of Serie A this season.
Monday Serie A Preview/Predictions – AS Roma, Lecce and Atalanta Seek Perfect Starts