Betis-Real Madrid 1-0: three posts, a penalty saved in the 93rd minute and nineteen shots. How to lose a match you won

The verdict, before the numbers

At La Cartuja it finished 1-0 to Betis. In the table those are three points like any other, and Betis are level on nine with Real Madrid and Barcelona.

On the pitch it was something else. It was the most one-sided match played in Europe this weekend, and it was won by the side that did the suffering.

Nineteen shots, no goals

Real Madrid had nineteen attempts and produced 3.38 expected goals. They scored none.

This was not an evening of hopeful efforts from distance: inside those nineteen shots there are three clear chances and a sequence of moments that, lined up, read like a practical joke.

In the 14th minute, Vinícius hit the post from a position worth 0.29 expected goals.

In the 32nd, Vinícius again, this time the biggest open-play chance of the night: 0.52 expected goals, a little better than a coin toss. Saved.

In the 42nd, Mbappé got a shot away from a position worth 0.50. Blocked.

In the 50th, Huijsen hit the second post of the evening.

In the 84th, Mbappé hit the third.

In the 93rd, from the penalty spot, Mbappé took the heaviest shot of the match: 0.74 expected goals. Álvaro Valles pushed it away.

Three times off the woodwork, a penalty saved in the 93rd, an equaliser ruled out by VAR for offside in stoppage time. If anyone ever asks you what "unlucky" means in a football match, show them that list.

Betis, meanwhile, did exactly one thing

At the other end the numbers are even more striking, in the opposite direction.

Betis had ten attempts in ninety minutes. Nine of those ten shots are worth, all together, 0.23 expected goals. Twenty-three hundredths from nine shots. That is the attacking output of a side that never really got near the goal.

The tenth is the goal: Troy Parrott, on as a substitute, on the second phase of a corner, from very close range. 0.67 expected goals, the biggest chance of the night for anyone other than the penalty taker.

The brutal summary: Betis created one chance and scored it. Real created three big ones plus a spot kick, and missed the lot.

What this says about Betis, and what it does not

Now the part where you have to be careful, because it is where nearly everybody slips.

Betis have nine points out of twelve. Their expected points, over the same four matches, are 3.65. A gap of 5.35 points: the biggest in Europe, with nobody in any league in the same situation.

But where does that gap come from? Here the data is more interesting than it looks, and it is not what you would expect.

It does not come from the attack. In four matches Betis have scored five goals from 5.47 expected goals. In other words: exactly what they created, nothing more. No magic in front of goal.

It comes from their own goal. They have conceded five goals from 8.85 expected goals against. Nearly four goals of difference, on the right side.

Put plainly: Betis are not scoring more than they deserve, they are conceding far fewer goals than they are giving up chances for. Last night you saw the whole thing inside a single match, and it has a name.

Is it sustainable? Over four matches anything can happen. Over a season, almost never. But one thing is worth saying that the numbers alone do not: saving a penalty in the 93rd minute is not luck, it is a goalkeeper. The model does not tell the two apart, and that is a limit of the model, not a truth about Betis.

And Real Madrid?

Here the message is the opposite, and far calmer.

Real have nine points from 11.04 expected points. In four matchdays they have produced 12.66 expected goals, the highest figure in the league, and scored ten. They have conceded 3.13 expected goals in total, the second-best defensive number in Spain.

There is nothing to fix in what Real Madrid produce. There is a wait for the goal to reopen, and that is something that sorts itself out, because finishing over time always returns to the mean.

The paradox of the evening is exactly this: of the two sides that walked out of La Cartuja on nine points, the one that has to worry is not the one that lost.

The honest bit

Two warnings, because without them the above is just an elegant way of saying "Real were unlucky".

Missing chances is a choice as well as an accident. Nineteen shots and no goals also contain the quality of the final pass, the body position, the timing of the decision. The model adds up the positions shots are taken from; it does not judge how they are struck. Anyone reading this data as a full acquittal is using it badly.

Four matchdays are not a season. Betis at +5.35 is a real and startling number today, and it will probably be a memory by November. We are writing it now, with the date on it, so that in November it can be checked without cherry-picking after the fact.

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 Betis-Real Madrid shot by shot, with the value of each one.