For fifty-five minutes the Olimpico belonged to Lazio, a team playing like the league leaders they are, sharp and fearless and two goals to the good. Then Diego Moreira decided otherwise. In the space of two ferocious minutes the AC Milan substitute struck twice, turning a comfortable home procession into a 2-2 draw that left the champions of the first month clinging to their perch and the visitors marching away with something they had barely earned.

It was a match that swung on its axis so violently that both dressing rooms could reasonably claim to feel aggrieved. Lazio, who had bossed the opening hour with the swagger of a side unbeaten and top of Serie A, will feel two points slipped through their fingers. Milan, so passive for so long, will know they were a whisker from defeat before Moreira lit the fuse. The final whistle brought neither relief nor celebration, only the peculiar frustration of a game that gave everyone something and no one enough.

This is the tightrope of early autumn, when tables are still forming and every dropped point carries an outsized weight. Lazio remain first, but the gloss of a two-goal cushion will sting long after the ledger is settled. Milan, fourth and still unbeaten, took a point from a place they had no business taking anything for an hour.

Lazio's flying start

Lazio came out of the blocks with menace, and by the tenth minute they had their reward. Mattia Zaccagni, ever the provider, slipped the ball into the danger zone and Matteo Cancellieri met it inside the six-yard box, his left foot guiding a low finish into the bottom right corner. The Olimpico erupted, and the home side sensed the afternoon bending their way.

There was nothing fortunate about their control. Lazio pressed, probed and pinned Milan back, playing with the freedom of a team that had won three of its first four and conceded only three goals all season. The lead was not a smash-and-grab; it was the logical outcome of the game's rhythm, and it grew more emphatic still before the interval.

On thirty-nine minutes the second arrived, and it was Tijjani Noslin who supplied it. Rising to meet a delivery from close range, he steered a header into the bottom left corner, doubling the advantage and sending Lazio in at the break in command. Two goals up, unbeaten, top of the pile — this was precisely the picture their form had promised.

Milan's two-minute storm

Football, though, keeps its cruellest twists for the moments of greatest comfort. Milan had spent an hour looking flat and disjointed, but around them the game shifted, and on sixty-five minutes it turned. Christian Pulisic, alive to a chance from the left, teed up Diego Moreira, whose left-footed strike from a difficult angle found the centre of the goal. Suddenly the arithmetic looked precarious.

Barely had the Olimpico caught its breath when the ground fell silent altogether. Two minutes later, on sixty-seven, Moreira struck again — this time from outside the box, Adrien Rabiot the architect, the finish curling into the bottom right corner. There was a nervous wait as VAR examined the strike, but the goal stood, and with it Milan had erased a two-goal deficit in the blink of an eye.

It was a burst of pure ruthlessness from a player who had barely featured. Moreira, twice on the left foot, twice decisive, transformed the entire complexion of the contest. Where Milan had been ragged and second-best, they were now level, roused, and playing with the belief of a side that had stared down defeat and refused it. Rabiot and Pulisic, quiet before, had found the two passes that mattered.

What the point means

Lazio remain top of Serie A on ten points, their record still unblemished by defeat, but this was a draw dressed as a warning. Three wins and now this frustrating stalemate leaves them with a goal difference that has thinned and a lesson to absorb: two goals is not a lead to be trusted, and games are not won at half-time. Their attacking pattern remains a joy — Cancellieri, Zaccagni and Noslin all catching the eye — but the manner of the collapse will gnaw at them.

For AC Milan, fourth on eight points and still without a loss, the recovery carries genuine value. Two wins and two draws is a solid, unspectacular start, but the character shown here — coming from two down away from home against the league leaders — hints at a resilience that could serve them well across a long campaign. Their seven goals scored suggests firepower; the trick will be finding it earlier than the sixty-fifth minute.

The gap between the sides is now two points, and both will look at this game and see a template of what to fix. Lazio must learn to close out; Milan must learn to start. On this evidence, whichever masters its flaw first will be the one still standing tallest come the winter.

The road ahead

A draw at the Olimpico is rarely a dull thing, and this one leaves the early Serie A picture deliciously unresolved. Lazio sit atop the standings on merit, but the sheen has been dulled by a self-inflicted wound. Milan trail in fourth, yet leave with the momentum and the moral victory of a comeback that seemed improbable for an hour.

The margins here were slender and instructive. Two goals from Moreira, both left-footed, both threaded through by team-mates who had otherwise been peripheral, decided that neither side would take all three points. It is the kind of afternoon that shapes seasons quietly, teaching lessons that only reveal their worth in the months to come.

For now the table holds Lazio first and Milan fourth, both unbeaten, both with reasons for optimism and reasons for regret. The Olimpico crowd filed out having witnessed a match that had everything but a winner — a start turned into a scare, a scare turned into a rescue, and two teams left to wonder what might have been.