Atalanta 1-0 Bologna: a 96th-minute goal on 0.16 xG

Atalanta spent the match without the ball, took six shots and generated 0.16 expected goals - less than one chance in six across ninety minutes. And won. Bologna took sixteen shots, ten from inside the box, posted 1.35 xG, held 58% of the ball, and left with nothing.

We have broken down 516 matches, and in only thirteen of them did the scoreline diverge from the performance more than it did here.

A goal in the ninety-sixth minute

Samardzic scored the only goal at 90+6, the sixth minute of stoppage time. The score had been level for ninety-five minutes, and by everything happening on the pitch it should have stayed that way.

Of Atalanta's six shots, only two were on target. One of them went in. A 50% conversion of shots on target sounds extraordinary until you remember there were two of them: the side hit the target once that mattered, and once was enough.

Winning on 0.16 xG is close to unrepeatable

0.16 expected goals across a match is the level at which the model expects nothing at all from a team. The average Atalanta shot was worth 0.03 expected goals - roughly one chance in forty.

Across the 349 decisive matches we have broken down, only one was won by a side that created less. This is not luck in the everyday sense; it is the edge of the distribution.

Bologna did everything except score

Sixteen shots, ten of them from inside the box - Bologna were not firing hopefully from distance, they were carrying attacks into dangerous areas. 681 passes at almost 91% accuracy against 478 at 86% for the hosts. Two corners to one, so the territorial edge barely turned into set pieces.

Four offsides against none for Atalanta - four moments where Bologna stopped themselves. That is the detail of the evening: the side that created ten times more by expected goals halted its own move four times at the final action.

Atalanta's goalkeeper made three saves against Bologna's three shots on target, turning away everything that reached him.

A booking for the manager on sixty-one

Bologna's only card went not to a player but to Domenico Tedesco, their manager, on sixty-one minutes - goalless, an hour into a match his side had dominated without scoring. Atalanta's yellow went to Krstovic on seventy-three.

Shapes: a 4-3-3 under Sarri against a 4-2-3-1 under Tedesco. Bologna took the ball and the territory; Atalanta conceded both.

What it means for both sides

Atalanta sit fifth on six points with a goal difference of +2, Bologna fifteenth on zero and -2. The head-to-head is even: two wins each across the last four, with Bologna winning 1-0 at this ground in May.

For Bologna the reading is almost encouraging, odd as that sounds on zero points. 1.35 xG away from home, sixteen shots, ten from the box - that is a functioning attack. Only the final touch was missing, and that evens out over a season on its own.

For Atalanta the signal points the other way. The three points are real, but they came on 0.16 xG, a number that does not repeat. Sarri's side won a match having created nothing; next time, on the same six shots, the opponent converts their sixteen and the conversation is different.