Sassuolo beat Cesena 3-0 in the Coppa Italia Round of 64 on Sunday. The hosts had lost three of their last five games before this cup tie, while Cesena had won three of their last five. By then the fixture carried little weight beyond advancing to the next round.
Volpato opened the scoring in the thirteenth minute, and here's the thing — it wasn't a moment that looked set up from anything special. Adzic doubled the lead just before half-time, a forty-fifth-minute plus-two strike that caught Cesena still settling at the break. Lipani added a third in the seventy-fifth minute, and by then the tie had gone quiet.
Cesena made changes in the forty-sixth minute when Caprini came on, trying to shake things loose. Sassuolo brought on Bowie and Matic together in the sixty-sixth, then Pagano and Guidi in the sixty-eighth. Schirone picked up a yellow card in the seventy-second minute, and the visitors made a double substitution of their own shortly after.
Sassuolo kept possession at fifty-eight per cent and threw 95 attacks at the visitors, but here's the thing — they created only two big chances from all that work. Cesena managed eight shots on target across the game and saved five times, yet they couldn't turn that into anything. The visitors won more aerial duels, eleven apiece, but their success rate sat at just thirty-six per cent.
The result means Sassuolo advance to the next round, and Cesena go home empty-handed. It doesn't change much in the broader picture, but it keeps the hosts in the hunt for something. Cesena's run of three wins in a row came to an end, and they'll need to find another way forward.