There are afternoons at the Stadio Luigi Ferraris when Genoa's supporters ask only for something to believe in, and on this warm September Saturday Johan Vásquez gave them both the answer and the ache. The Mexican defender headed his side level early in the second half, hauling a listing team back from the brink, before undoing his own good work with a needless second yellow that reduced Genoa to ten men. The 1-1 draw with Frosinone was a point earned and a point that changes almost nothing.

Genoa remain 19th, marooned on a solitary win-less tally, their season already carrying the weight of a slow-motion crisis. Frosinone, meanwhile, leave Liguria eighth and unbeaten in the mood if not in the record, a mid-table side quietly banking the kind of away results that separate the settled from the sinking. For the hosts this was survival dressed up as progress; for the visitors, a job half-done that still stretched their advantage over their hosts.

The pattern was set inside a quarter of an hour, and it was a familiar one for Genoa: an early concession, a mountain to climb, a crowd biting its nails. That they climbed at all owed everything to a defender doing a striker's work, and everything to a first-half miss that will haunt this club long after the final whistle faded into the Genoese evening.

An early wound

Frosinone struck with the calm of a team that had done its homework. In the 14th minute Romano Schmid slipped a pass into the pocket of space Genoa kept leaving open, and Giorgi Kvernadze needed no second invitation. The forward opened his body and stroked a right-footed shot from the centre of the box into the bottom-right corner, the ball nestling home with a precision that belied the scramble around it.

It was a goal that told the story of Genoa's autumn in miniature: a defence eight goals shipped in four games now, generous to a fault, undone again by movement it could not track. The Ferraris exhaled its familiar groan. Frosinone, so often the away side content to sit deep, instead looked the more assured, playing with the freedom of a club whose league position affords it a little swagger.

For a spell the visitors threatened to make the afternoon a procession. Kvernadze's finish had the whiff of an opening act rather than a decisive blow, and Genoa's response was ragged, anxious, the football of a team that has forgotten what winning tastes like. Something had to shift, and the shift, when it came, arrived wrapped in cruelty.

The penalty that wasn't

Deep into first-half stoppage time Genoa were handed a lifeline, and Lorenzo Colombo stepped up to take it. The striker planted the ball on the spot with the whole ground holding its breath, a chance to walk in level at the interval and change the entire complexion of the contest. His left-footed effort was close, agonisingly close, but it slid just wide of the left-hand post.

A missed penalty is rarely just a missed penalty. It is a shot at momentum squandered, a psychological gift handed straight back, and for a side as short on confidence as Genoa it threatened to be the moment the afternoon collapsed for good. Colombo trudged back to the halfway line with his head bowed, the sound of a stadium's hope leaking away around him.

That Genoa did not fold in the minutes that followed was, in the context of their season, no small thing. They went in at the break a goal down and a penalty poorer, but they came back out with something approaching purpose. The redemption they sought would not come from the man who had spurned the spot-kick.

Redemption and ruin

Five minutes into the second half Genoa found their leveller from the most reliable of routes for a struggling side: a set piece. Djibril Sow swung in a cross following a corner, and there was Johan Vásquez, rising in the centre of the box to steer a right-footed finish into the bottom-right corner. The Ferraris erupted with the pent-up relief of a season's worth of frustration, and for a moment the defender was the hero the home crowd had been craving.

But football rarely lets a story rest so neatly. With four minutes of normal time remaining, Vásquez lunged into a bad foul and collected a second yellow card, his afternoon ending in the tunnel and his team reduced to ten. The man who had dragged Genoa level now left them a body short to defend the point he had won, a swing from saviour to liability inside 36 minutes.

Genoa dug in for the closing stages, throwing bodies in front of everything, and Frosinone could not find the winner their overall play had perhaps merited. When the whistle blew, the honours were even, the emotions anything but. Vásquez's day summed up his club's fragile fortunes: capable of the sublime and the self-destructive in the same breath.

The road ahead

For Genoa the arithmetic is stark. One point from four matches, 19th in Serie A, and a goal difference already haemorrhaging at minus six. A draw is not a defeat, and against a side sitting eighth there is a sliver of credit to be taken, but the deeper truth is that this is a club learning the grammar of a relegation fight far too early in the campaign. The performance offered fight; the table offers no comfort.

Frosinone will feel this was two points dropped rather than one gained, having led and dominated the opening exchanges. Yet eighth place and an unbeaten week away from home is hardly a disaster, and their tally of seven points keeps them tucked in the comfortable middle of the pack. Against ten men they lacked the ruthlessness to punish, and that will nag, but their season retains its quiet health.

The Ferraris emptied slowly, its supporters caught between gratitude for a fighting draw and dread at what the standings still say. Genoa's problems are structural, not incidental, and a single point against a mid-table opponent papers over nothing. Frosinone travel home knowing the harder work of the season lies ahead, but with the luxury of doing so from a position of strength their hosts can only envy.