Krzysztof Piatek did not require any act of misdirection to save himself from getting mobbed at the airport when he arrived for his medical at Genoa this summer. There was no need to keep travel plans secret, or to wait until everyone was busy watching the World Cup final.

Why would there be? This was not another Cristiano Ronaldo arriving to upend Italian football, but an uncapped striker one month away from his 23rd birthday. At €4.5m, Piatek was only Genoa’s fifth-most expensive signing of the summer.

So far, though, he it outscoring the Portuguese by two to one. On Wednesday night, the Rossoblu played their fifth league game of the season, and Piatek grabbed his sixth goal. He is the first Genoa player to find the net in five consecutive games to start a top-flight campaign. Throw in the four strikes he piled up in a Coppa Italia rout of Lecce, and Piatek has already hit double figures.

Italian football is running out of precedents. By scoring in the sixth minute of his Serie A debut, at home to Empoli, he became the fastest foreigner to open his account in the division since Luis Vinicio for Napoli in 1955. Piatek has as many goals as Andriy Shevchenko did at the equivalent stage of his first Serie A season but, unlike the Ukrainian, has struck in every match.

His latest victims were Chievo on Wednesday. Piatek opened the scoring in the 42nd minute, but you could feel the goal coming long before. In the 22nd minute, he took a pass from Goran Pandev and shot over from the edge of the D. Soon after, he bullied a defender off a bouncing ball, pivoted away from two more and crashed a low shot against the post.

Piatek appeared incredulous at the ball’s refusal to go in. He would be even more so at a decision by the referee, Fabrizio Pasqua, to book him for simulation after the striker appeared to be fouled by Luca Rossettini in the box.

None of it mattered. With half-time approaching, Darko Lazovic launched a forceful dribble down the left. Four Chievo defenders were caught ball-watching. Piatek, noting that his marker was one of them, halted his own run and waited for the space to create itself. A cut-back duly arrived, and he took a touch to help the ball across his body before finishing right-footed into the far corner.

Genoa’s Krzysztof Piatek celebrates after scoring against Lazio. Photograph: Angelo Carconi/EPA

Such cool-headed opportunism has been Piatek’s calling card in Serie A. These are early days yet, and not even he might predict that his current strike rate can endure, but his poacher’s instincts are clear.

Several of his goals have come from outside the box but none have required more than three touches. That is because he has often done the hard work already, either by forcing defenders into mistakes or simply by recognising the errors that they are about to make and putting himself in position to take advantage.

“On the pitch I think constantly about how a move could develop, where I need to position myself to receive a pass,” Piatek told Gazzetta dello Sport. “Often it plays out that way for real. In Italy there was a striker who seemed to draw the ball to him: [Pippo] Inzaghi. I would like to be the same way.”

He insisted in the same interview that he had not been surprised by his own fast start. “I only have one target: to score goals in every game,” Piatek continued. “That doesn’t mean I have to succeed every time, it’s just the mentality with which I want to step onto the pitch for each match.”

As a kid he had posters of the Brazilian Ronaldo on his wall, though curiously another of his idols is now playing alongside him at Genoa. Piatek’s favourite team to play on Fifa was the treble-winning Inter side in which Pandev played a supporting role to Diego Milito and Samuel Eto’o. Now the Macedonian serves as the wise old head in an otherwise youthful Genoa attack.

The formation preferred by manager Davide Ballardini so far this season has been a 3-4-1-2, with Pandev in the No 10 role. Piatek has started every game up front, and alongside him on Wednesday was Christian Kouamé, a 20-year-old Ivorian with pace to burn. The success of their partnership has thus far restricted the 21-year-old Italian Andrea Favilli to just a single substitute’s appearance, but he produced two assists in his 45 minutes on the pitch against Sassuolo.

It was Pandev who sealed the win for Genoa on Wednesday, producing what Italians sometimes refer to as “un biliardo” – literally, a billiards shot – aimed with gentle spin along the floor and through a crowd of defenders into the bottom corner of the net. The game ended 2-0, raising Genoa to a share of seventh place with a game in hand.

They are not kidding themselves about the season’s ambitions. This team has plenty of flaws – exploited vividly during defeats to Lazio and Sassuolo in which they conceded a combined nine goals. Their first target is simply to avoid relegation.

A prolific Piatek can go a long way in that regard. The striker has explained his goal celebration, in which he uses his hands to mimic pistols held across his chest, as a reference to the lexicon of Polish football – where strikers are often likened to gunslingers. For followers of Italian football, it carries echoes of Gabriel Batistuta and his famous machine gun.

Piatek has a very long way to go yet before he could be compared to Batigol. Then again, perhaps there is no need to draw parallels for a striker who is already scoring goals at a rate that nobody else in the division can match.



Talking points (to follow)

• I’m not sure anyone still cares for statistical evidence of Juventus’s domestic hegemony buy, hey, this is now the first time since 1930 that they have won seven consecutive games to start a Serie A season. More significant, with Saturday’s game against Napoli looming into view, is that Paulo Dybala opened his account for this campaign, and for the first time looked like he was working out how to play with Cristiano Ronaldo.

• Napoli were brilliant as they dispatched Parma 3-0 – all the more impressive when you consider they had changed 9 out of 11 players from the team that beat Torino 3-1 on Sunday. Carlo Ancelotti is showing his team they can rotate and win, and his decision to shift Lorenzo Insigne into a more central role as a second striker is also paying dividends.

• Three wins in a week for Inter. Corner turned? I’m not convinced – with better finishing Fiorentina might have won and Stefano Pioli’s team played the more engaging football. But there is a confidence and aggression that was missing previously.

• An emphatic and much-needed win for Roma. A gorgeous strike by Cengiz Under. Another backheel goal by Javier Pastore. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This Frosinone team have no wins, no goals scored, and 16 conceded after just six games.