Athletic-Atlético 3-0: seventeen box entries and not one shot worth more than 13%

The verdict, before the numbers

At San Mamés, in front of 48,425 spectators, Athletic Club beat Atlético Madrid 3-0 with three goals in a spectacular second half. It is the first defeat of the season for Simeone's side.

The 3-0 looks like domination. The territorial data says the exact opposite. And the figure that really matters says a third thing, which is the one that explains everything.

Seventeen to two, and zero chances

Look at the two lines together, because separately they mean nothing.

Box entries: Atlético 17, Athletic 2. Big chances: Athletic 3, Atlético 0.

Atlético completed seventeen passes inside their opponents' final twenty metres. Athletic two. Territorially there was no contest: Simeone's side lived in Bilbao's half.

And across all those ninety minutes, in fourteen attempts, they did not produce one shot from a position worth more than 0.13 expected goals. Thirteen hundredths. Their best effort of the night came from a spot that goes in, on average, thirteen times in a hundred.

Final sum: 0.66 expected goals for the whole match. Seventeen times inside the box, zero times in front of goal.

Athletic did the opposite

Ten shots in total. Three of those ten were big chances. They scored all three.

Nico Williams, right on half time: 0.47. Robert Navarro, two minutes into the second half: 0.41. Oihan Sancet, at the death: 0.52.

The three goals are worth 1.40 expected goals between them, and they are the three heaviest shots Athletic took. No fluke, no thirty-yard strike: three real chances, three goals.

And they did it without the ball and without pressing: PPDA 21.0, meaning they let Atlético make twenty-one passes before going to disturb them. They sat back, gave up the pitch, waited for the break. Then, in three minutes either side of the interval, they closed the match out.

It is the same flaw as the whole weekend

This is not an isolated oddity at San Mamés. It is the fourth time in three days, and it is the most extreme.

Fulham made twenty-four box entries against Crystal Palace and got two big chances out of them. They lost 3-2.

Bayern made twenty-two in Gelsenkirchen and got two. Their best shot was worth 0.37. They drew 0-0.

Roma made twenty against Atalanta and got five — the best of the four — but their most dangerous shot was worth 0.37 and it took thirty-eight attempts. They won in the 93rd.

Atlético made seventeen and got zero. They lost 3-0.

Four sides that spent the match inside the opposition box. One draw, one win at the death, two defeats.

There is only one message, and it is worth more than any individual result: getting the ball into the box is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. It is the first step, not the last. What decides matches is what happens after you get there, and territorial models cannot see that "after".

What it says about the two seasons

Atlético, before last night, were the most territorial side in LaLiga: thirty-nine box entries in four matchdays. They have seven points from 4.69 expected points, meaning they are taking more than they are producing, and a defeat like last night's was statistically due sooner or later.

The problem their numbers describe is not a lack of football: it is that the football arrives in the box and stops there. Seven goals from 4.31 expected in four matches say that so far it is the quality of their forwards solving it, not the quality of the chances.

Athletic are, alongside Roma, one of the most honest sides we are measuring: six points from 6.62 expected points, a gap of -0.62. But with a detail worth watching: twenty-one box entries made against thirty-six conceded in four matchdays. They give up far more than they produce.

Last night that structure worked perfectly, because against an opponent who enters the box without building chances, conceding territory costs nothing. Against someone who arrives there properly, it will cost.

The honest bit

Atlético did not play badly, they played unfinished. Seventeen box entries are the numbers of a side in control. Zero big chances are the numbers of a side that does not complete its moves. Both are true and both need saying together.

Athletic did not simply win on the counter. They converted three chances out of three, and that is a finishing rate that does not repeat: if the same three chances come along next Sunday, the average says one and a half go in.

And the 3-0 is wider than the chances say. Expected goals 1.78 to 0.66: Athletic deserved to win, not to win by three. Anyone looking only at the scoreboard today is overstating the distance between these two sides.

Check for yourself. In the Meritometro you will find the verdict on every LaLiga match based on chances rather than results, and in the Nerd Zone you can go back through Athletic-Atlético shot by shot, with the value of each attempt.