Mantova made light work of Catanzaro on the road, running out 3-1 winners in a one-sided affair that saw the visitors establish control early and never look back. Bodin Tomašević opened the scoring in the 30th minute after a setup from Rares Ilie, and Mantova doubled their lead just four minutes later when Francesco Ruocco finished off a move created by Fahem Benaissa Yahia. By the time Davide Bragantini added a third in the 55th — courtesy of an assist from Alessio Castellini — the game was already decided. Catanzaro pulled one back in stoppage time through Matias Antonini Lui, set up by Emanuele Pecorino, but it proved nothing more than a consolation.

Our model leaned toward a narrow Mantova win, predicting a 1-2 scoreline with the away side favoured at 34% probability. We got the result direction spot on, but the margin was wider than expected — Mantova's superior away form and firepower showed up more decisively than the pre-match numbers suggested. Before kickoff, Catanzaro's recent home record and Mantova's patchy away results pointed toward a tighter contest, yet the visitors' quality and top-two ambition proved too much for a Catanzaro side battling relegation pressure. The model didn't anticipate quite how dominant Mantova would be, though the outcome sat comfortably within the range of plausible outcomes we'd flagged.