There are afternoons when a game is decided before the crowd has finished settling, and Via Del Mare witnessed one on Sunday. By the time the clock ticked past 21 minutes, Lecce led Monza 3-1 and the shape of the contest was already carved in stone. What followed was a long, gnawing wait, punctuated by a late scare, but the essential truth of a 3-2 win never wavered. Lecce were quicker, sharper and braver when it mattered.

Lassana Coulibaly was the man who framed it all, bookending Lecce's flurry with a goal at either end of the opening 21 minutes. The first was a header, the second a stab from close range, and between them the hosts turned a routine Serie A afternoon into a rout that only Monza's late defiance dressed up as a contest. For a side that arrived tenth and left the day emboldened, it was a statement of intent.

Set-piece slaughter

Lecce's early aggression was rooted in the most old-fashioned of weapons: the corner. In the third minute Ivan Ilic swung one in and Coulibaly rose in the centre of the box to plant a header into the bottom-left corner. The lead was barely warm before it doubled. Seven minutes later Ilic delivered again from another corner, and this time Tiago Gabriel climbed highest, nodding into the high centre of the goal to leave the visiting keeper flailing.

Two goals, two corners, one supplier. Ilic's deliveries were a persistent menace, and Monza had no answer to the aerial pressure they invited. It was ruthless, repeatable and entirely of Lecce's own making. When a team scores twice from set-pieces inside ten minutes, it speaks not of luck but of preparation, of a plan executed with cold precision.

The pattern spoke volumes about where this game was being won. Monza, so leaky all season, were once again undone by the simplest of routines, unable to organise a box that Lecce treated as their own. The hosts smelled blood early, and they hunted.

Frantic quarter-hour

Just as the contest threatened to open up, it exploded. On 20 minutes Monza finally found a foothold, Samuele Birindelli teeing up Ricardo Mangas to jab home from very close range into the bottom-left corner. For a fleeting moment it was 2-1, a lifeline, a suggestion that the afternoon might yet bend the visitors' way.

The reprieve lasted precisely one minute. Straight from the restart Lecce surged forward, Danilo Veiga whipped in a cross, and there was Coulibaly again, this time steering a right-footed finish from the right side of the six-yard box into the bottom-right corner. 3-1. The Malian's second of the afternoon snuffed out Monza's flicker of belief almost before it had caught light.

It was breathless, chaotic football compressed into a single spell, and it drained the drama out of the scoreline while leaving the emotion of the day intact. Lecce had answered a punch with a haymaker of their own. From that point the tempo cooled, the hosts content to manage rather than chase, but the damage to Monza had already been done in a whirlwind opening third.

A late scare

The margin held comfortably until the 89th minute, when Exequiel Zeballos gave the home support a final flutter of anxiety. His free-kick, struck cleanly with the right foot into the bottom-left corner, made it 3-2 and injected a jolt of tension into what had felt like a procession. Suddenly the closing seconds carried weight, and Lecce were forced to see out a finish they had made look academic.

See it out they did. Whatever nerves Zeballos's strike summoned, Lecce refused to surrender the points they had banked so emphatically in the first half. It was a reminder, though, of the fragility that can attend even the most dominant afternoons, and a hint that the hosts must learn to close games with less drama.

For Monza, the goal was scant consolation, a statistic to soften an otherwise sobering afternoon. Two goals scored away from home ought to yield something, yet the defensive lapses that gifted Lecce their platform meant the visitors left with nothing but the familiar taste of a scoreline that flattered them.

Table talk

The win lifts Lecce to sixth points and a settled tenth place, their record now reading two wins, no draws and two defeats. It is the profile of a side finding its feet, capable of blistering spells and, on this evidence, of grinding out results even when the finish grows fraught. Five goals for and seven against tells of a team still learning its balance, but four of those five have come with real bite.

Monza's plight, by contrast, deepens. Rooted in 18th on a single point, with no wins from four and a solitary draw to show for their labours, they remain among the division's strugglers. Eleven goals conceded is a number that will haunt Cristian coaching staff and supporters alike, and the manner of Sunday's defeat — two set-piece goals shipped inside ten minutes — will sting most of all.

For the visitors, the season is already threatening to slide into something graver than a slow start. Six goals scored suggests the attacking tools exist, but a defence that keeps conceding in bunches renders that firepower moot. Something must change, and quickly, before the gap to safety hardens into a chasm.

Lecce, meanwhile, can savour a home victory that will echo around Via Del Mare. They were relentless when it counted and resilient when tested, and that combination is the currency of survival and more. For a club with modest ambitions, an afternoon like this offers proof that the plan works — and that, when the set-pieces flow, few sides can live with them.