Vanoli, golden changes: from Elmas to Gineitis, eight goals from the bench make Toro shine

Little by little it is becoming one of those habits of Toro through which to remember - or why not, tell - a season. It is a pleasant film proposed and re-proposed during the championship under the direction of Paolo Vanoli from Varese. Toro scores, and with a certain frequency, with the players who come off the bench during the match. It can be defined as the change effect, which in principle should be told through numbers: eight goals from the bench, 27.5% of the total. In the first twenty-six days of the championship, the granata have scored twenty-nine times in total. The last two are very fresh, indeed they are very fresh memories: the pearl with the right of Elmas, accompanied by a tunnel and finished with a very soft lob in Bologna. And three days ago the surgical (and powerful) left-footed shot of the twenty-year-old Gineitis with which he knocked out Milan. In chronological order, the last pearl was the one signed by the Lithuanian, in an intense, endless, in many ways unforgettable night. And it was also the heaviest. Which certifies a phenomenon: the garnet bench works. Well.

And so, continuing the discussion always through the numbers, because Toro thanks to its bench has literally made thirteen. On the field the data has served its purpose: the goals scored by the players who came on as substitutes during the match have added thirteen points to the ranking of the team coached by Paolo Vanoli. It is an important data, it is configured as one of the most qualifying of the entire Serie A championship. For example, only Lazio (fourteen goals thanks to the substitutes) and Atalanta (nine) are positioned ahead of Toro in this special ranking: the granata are thus placed on the podium, in third place, in the ranking of goals by the bench players. A data that, in the end, tells a rather clear element: the club has given Vanoli a deep and quality team, with respect to which the coach has been able and good at knowing how to manage all the resources. "I don't leave anyone behind: with me everyone will have opportunities during the championship, because we are a group", has always been Vanoli's first commandment.

Toro's goals from the bench are eight. Looking into this statistic, an unprecedented - and also unusual - head to head emerges. It is the one between Che Adams and Gvidas Gineitis, who are competing for the title of top scorer as a substitute for Toro. Adams is in the lead with three goals, and the trio includes the pearl of December 13 (sixteenth matchday) in Empoli that was worth the coup in Tuscany: a "Maradona-style parable" directly from midfield. Previously, Adams had made the hearts of the Granata fans beat on the fifth matchday (September 20) in Verona by scoring the 2-3. In the following round, at home against Lazio (September 29), his goal was not enough to complete the comeback (2-3 for the Biancocelesti). Gineitis' story is more recent: it is the story of the draw of pride in Florence (1-1, twenty-first matchday) and the three-point shot of courage against the Devil on the last Saturday night of the championship.

Toro fans will surely remember October 5, because it was the day Duvan Zapata got injured. But that evening, at San Siro, home of Inter, on matchday 9 of Serie A, Nikola Vlasic had effectively begun his season by scoring the final 3-2 for the Nerazzurri on a penalty kick after having left the bench shortly before. At various points in the championship, the bench has brought a good dose of creativity to Toro. Not only Vlasic, on October 25 (matchday 9) a shot from the very young Njie gave the home victory against Como (1-0). Stories from the first half of the season but which tie in well with the present. Because Bologna is a flash from the day before yesterday, with the applause-worthy jewel freed by Elmas. For the Macedonian it was the beginning, the best is yet to come. In the meantime, the change effect is there and it shows.