Roma 2-2 Inter: Lautaro Martínez brace cancels out Mario Koné double at the Olimpico

The two form sides of the opening month of Serie A met at the Olimpico and could not be separated, sharing eight goals across their first five rounds combined without either giving an inch at the top of the table. Roma built a two-goal lead and looked the sharper side for most of the first half, but Inter's response in this fixture, as in their comeback against Udinese five days earlier, showed why Cristian Chivu's side remain one of the two clubs yet to lose all season.

Koné's early double

Mario Koné gave Roma the lead inside six minutes, finishing off a move set up by Matías Molina, and doubled it in the 37th minute with an assist from Mancini. Gian Piero Gasperini's side controlled the game for the best part of 45 minutes, and at 2-0 up against the division's in-form attack, the Olimpico had every reason to believe this was heading toward a statement win.

Lautaro answers twice

Inter needed one minute of the second half to halve the deficit: Lautaro Martínez turned home a Marcus Thuram assist to make it 2-1 almost from the restart, and the momentum shifted decisively. The Argentine struck again in the 79th minute, scrambling in the equaliser from close range after a spell of sustained late Inter pressure, to complete his brace and make it 2-2.

"The way we conceded was a bit too soft, maybe even a little arrogant — the third time this has happened to us, after Atalanta and Fenerbahçe. But there's a lot of positivity in this team; both sides could have won it."

— Gian Piero Gasperini, Roma manager

"What needed to be said about the first half, I said at the break, and it stays in the dressing room. In the second half, for attitude, grit, quality and personality, we played a great game. We have to be better at how we approach matches — it happens, you learn, and you move on."

— Cristian Chivu, Inter manager

Cards

Roma had three players booked — Evan Ndicka, Konstantinos Koulierakis and Mario Ghilardi — while Inter matched them with three of their own, Barella, Manuel Akanji and Alessandro Bastoni, a sign of just how physical the closing stages became as both sides pushed for a winner that never arrived.

Two unbeaten runs collide, and stay level

That table of Inter's last five matches shows a side that has not lost a Serie A game all season and has scored in every one of them, its only defeat coming in Europe against Real Madrid. Roma's own recent form was every bit as strong going into this game — four straight Serie A wins, including a 4-0 rout of Fiorentina and a 2-0 win at Torino the previous weekend — and conceding only once in that run before this draw. The result was, in that sense, true to form for both sides: two teams that keep finding a way to score, meeting each other and doing exactly that.

The draw leaves Roma and Inter level at the top of Serie A on 13 points from five matches, still without a defeat between them domestically, and with the closest thing to a title-race framing that the division has offered this early in a season. Both had arrived unbeaten in the league, and both leave unbeaten still — a first dropped points of the campaign for each, in the same match, against each other.

What's next

Both sides go into the September international break knowing they let two points slip rather than lost them, and both will fancy their chances of pulling clear again once Serie A resumes. Roma will look to shore up a defence that had conceded only once all season before Lautaro's double, while Inter will want to find the mentality Chivu talked about from kick-off rather than at half-time, having now trailed early in back-to-back matches before recovering.