The No. 9s Take Centre Stage in Serie A

First it was the academy graduates, then the debutants who made an immediate impact. Matchday 3 of the 2026/27 Serie A Enilive season brought a new cast of protagonists to the fore, with one of the league’s most traditional figures back at centre stage: the centre-forward.

That resurgence is all the more notable given the trend in recent seasons, when goals have spread increasingly across wingers, attacking midfielders, central midfielders, and even defenders. Last season’s scoring charts told the same story: Lautaro Martínez finished as Serie A’s top scorer with 17 goals, an unusually low tally for the league’s leading marksman.

Matchday 3, however, suggested the tide may be turning. Pellegrino, Adams, Lautaro, Thuram, Højlund, Raimondo, Piccoli and Dovbyk are very different centre-forwards with very different paths, but they all had one thing in common: they found the net. Headers, long-range strikes, acrobatic finishes, efforts with the weaker foot or simply being in the right place at the right time. The No. 9s are back – and they want their crown back.

Pellegrino and Adams, Centre-Forwards in Every Sense

Mateo Pellegrino was the first striker to take centre stage over the weekend. The Argentine scored his first goal for Fiorentina against Torino, his favourite Serie A opponent: he has now struck six times against the Granata, at least three more than against any other side.

Yet the finish itself was far from typical for a striker who usually does his best work inside the box. It was only the second goal from distance of Pellegrino’s Serie A career and his first since January 3, 2026, when he scored against Sassuolo for Parma. It also continued a small Argentine thread in Fiorentina’s history: Pellegrino became just the third Argentine to score the Viola’s opening Serie A goal of a season, after Ramón Díaz and Gabriel Batistuta, who both achieved the feat twice.

Fiorentina’s opener, though, only served to ignite Torino’s response. After former Granata midfielder Mandragora drew the sides level, Che Adams completed the comeback late on, scoring again after finding the net against AC Milan. At San Siro, he had produced a superb first-time volley into the top corner; at the Franchi, he showed another side of the centre-forward’s craft, combining aggression, coordination and a touch of acrobatics to seal all three points for Torino.

Højlund vs ThuLa: Strikers Rule at San Siro

If one game captured the resurgence of the centre-forward, Inter-Napoli delivered just about everything. Three of the five players with the most Serie A goals since the start of last season were on target in the 3-2 thriller at San Siro: Lautaro Martínez (19), Rasmus Højlund and Marcus Thuram (14). The other two are Donyell Malen (19) and Tasos Douvikas (16).

Højlund put Napoli in front while also showcasing an intriguing new dimension to his finishing. Both of his Serie A goals this season have come from outside the box, after just one of his previous 21 goals in the competition had arrived from distance. No player has scored more from outside the area after three matchdays. With three goals and two assists, the Dane has already established himself as the focal point of Allegri’s Napoli attack.

Then came Inter’s response, powered by ThuLa. Marcus Thuram struck again with one of his trademark weapons: his aerial ability. The Frenchman has now scored nine headed goals in Serie A, with only Duván Zapata (11) and Gianluca Mancini (10) managing more since his arrival in the league. Over the same period, Thuram has reached 41 goals in all competitions, a total surpassed only by Lautaro Martínez (55).

The Inter captain was at the heart of the comeback, scoring twice to turn the game around and finding the net against Napoli in Serie A for the first time since November 2021 – fittingly, in another 3-2 win at the Meazza. In doing so, he also wrote another chapter in Nerazzurri history: with 134 Serie A goals for Inter, Lautaro moved past Stefano Nyers (133) into outright third place on the Club’s all-time league scoring list. Only Benito Lorenzi (138) and Giuseppe Meazza (197) remain ahead of him.

Raimondo, from Serie C Relegation to the Top-Scorer Race

Alongside the established names, one young striker is making his mark at remarkable speed. Antonio Raimondo may still be a relative newcomer to Serie A, but he has settled into the role of centre-forward with impressive ease.

In June 2025, he was relegated to Serie C with Salernitana. He had already sampled Serie A with Venezia in 2024/25 before earning his way back with Frosinone, playing a leading role in their promotion from Serie B. Now, just three matchdays into the new season, he is the highest-scoring Italian in the league with four goals, behind only Malen in the overall standings.

Those four goals have come in two braces, against Fiorentina and Venezia, both proving decisive in Frosinone victories. With Raimondo leading the line, the Ciociari have won at least two of their opening three Serie A matches for the first time in their history.

Piccoli and Dovbyk, Bologna’s Twin Towers

In Bologna, the decision to pair two centre-forwards proved decisive. With the Rossoblù chasing the game against Sassuolo, Domenico Tedesco turned to both Roberto Piccoli and Artem Dovbyk to add greater presence up front.

Piccoli had already pulled Bologna level in the 50th minute with his first goal for the Club. Dovbyk’s introduction in the 66th added even more weight and presence in the opposition box, before the Ukrainian struck in the 91st minute. It was his first Bologna goal too, and it secured the Felsinei’s first point of the season.

For Piccoli in particular, changing clubs has done little to interrupt his scoring habit. The 2001-born striker has found the net for seven of the nine teams he has represented in Serie A: Bologna, Fiorentina, Cagliari, Lecce, Empoli, Atalanta and Spezia. Since scoring his first goal in the competition in 2020/21, no player has scored for more different clubs across Europe’s top five leagues. He also continues to stand out among players born in 2001 or later: over the last four Serie A seasons, he has scored 20 goals, level with Charles De Ketelaere and behind only Matías Soulé on 22.

Experience, physicality and instinct, but also a far broader skill set than traditional penalty-box play alone. Matchday 3 brought centre-forwards back to the forefront of Serie A while also underlining just how much the role of the modern No. 9 has evolved.