18 shots, 5 big chances, no goals: the most unjust match in Europe

The verdict, before the numbers

At the Penzo it finished 0-2 to Lecce. Going by the scoresheet alone, a comfortable away win on the opening weekend.

Going by the chances, it is the most unjust match of the round. And by some distance.

The two numbers that turn it all around

Venezia: 18 shots, 3.19 expected goals, no goals. Lecce: 12 shots, 2.45 expected goals, two goals.

Venezia built chances worth more than three goals and scored none of them.

This is not just any off night. We went through all forty-five matches played on the opening weekend in Serie A, the Premier League, La Liga and Ligue 1: -3.19 is the biggest negative gap in Europe. No team, in any league, came close to a similar divide between what it created and what it collected. The second worst, Toulouse, beaten 0-2 by Lyon after producing 2.16 expected goals, is a whole goal further back.

And we are not talking about shots blazed in from distance. Venezia produced five big chances, efforts with at least a 30% probability of ending up in the net. Five. Lecce had three.

Five chances worth at least a third of a goal each, translated into zero.

And then there is what the scoresheet does not record

Twice Venezia celebrated, and twice it was taken away.

On 15 minutes Correia put the hosts ahead, only for the goal to be disallowed for handball. In the second half, on 75 minutes, Basic found the equaliser and the flag went up: offside.

Expected goals count shots, not refereeing verdicts: those two efforts go into the tally of chances created regardless. But the point stands, and it is almost cruel, Venezia did not only miss, they also scored twice without it counting.

How Lecce won

With two shots that capture the difference between creating and finishing.

The first goal comes from outside the box: Gorter collects from Coulibaly and beats Stankovic. A shot from distance is worth, on average, very little in probability terms: that one went in.

The second, on 80 minutes, is a close-range touch from Tiago Gabriel off a Veiga cross. A single shot in the whole match, worth 0.81 xG, the most dangerous effort seen at the Penzo. One touch, one goal.

Two shots, two goals. At the other end, eighteen shots and none.

The pressing that did not pay

There is one last number that makes the evening even crueller, and it is PPDA, how many passes you allow the opposition before going to disturb them. The lower it is, the more you press.

Venezia 5.5. Lecce 18.8.

These are two different matches. Venezia pressed suffocatingly, going in after five and a half passes. Lecce let them play, sat in, waited, almost nineteen passes before stepping out.

Venezia did everything a coach asks for: they pressed high, they shot often, they built clean chances. They lost 0-2.

The honest bit

Careful about what this means and what it does not.

It does not mean Lecce stole it: they created 2.45 expected goals, which is far from nothing, and they finished excellently. Across a season, turning two chances out of three into goals is a talent, not an accident.

Nor does it mean Venezia will play well all year: one match is one match.

It means one thing only, but a solid one: the 0-2 does not describe what happened on the pitch. If Venezia keep producing 3 expected goals a match, the goals will come, not out of poetic justice, but because that is how the numbers work over time. And the day they arrive, someone will call it a "turning point". It was already written on matchday one.

Watch the match again with the numbers. In the Meritometro you will find the verdict on every game of the weekend, shot by shot, and in the Nerd Zone you can compare Venezia and Lecce on every statistic. Do you think Venezia bounce back, or was it a flash in the pan?