Comment Slavia paid for huge inefficiency and failure in the end! Check out the stats, or a montage of chances scored

After the draw of the European Conference League groups, the fans of the Sešiovans were a bit embarrassed. On the one hand, there was sadness about the unattractive opponents, also far away. On the other hand, there was some excitement, because this was supposed to be a clear promotion from first place, but on paper.

But the reality was quite different. And it was shown in the opening match in Sivas, Turkey. An opponent just above the relegation zone in the local Super League. The match looked like that. The huge dominance of the Sivas team led to only one goal.

In vain would we look for a statistic in which the opponent of the Prague team was better. Ball possession, corner kicks, shots, number of passes or attacks. Slavia was clearly better, even dominant. And the same can be said of all six group performances.

All these positive indicators were outweighed by one negative one in the overall sum, namely inefficiency, if you want to say not converting chances. Despite the fact that the Slavs had enough chances to decide the game in Sivas, it didn’t happen. At the very end of the match, a penalty kick was ordered against the home team, which Provod failed to convert.

At that moment nobody knew how big a problem it was and how important points Slavia lost with it. The visit to Turkey was followed by a home game against FC Ballkani.

I know, I’m going to repeat myself, but the whole game can be summed up in one word and you guessed right, it’s efficiency. 25::4 on shots, 7::2 shots on goal and after a wild opening act a slim 3::2 victory.

The game against Cluj looked very similar. Or rather, the match with Cluj. The one at home ended 0:1 from her point of view, in Romania 0:2. Huge game dominance and unbelievable inability to convert chances. On the contrary, what the opponents kicked into the net, fell into the goal.

The penultimate match in the group took coach Trpišovský’s team to Kosovo, where they won a narrow 1: 0 victory. Before the last match, the Slavs did not have the promotion in their hands. They had to rely on a loss to Cluj, which didn’t happen, and also to score fully at home, which also didn’t happen.

The celebration of 130 years of the sports club brought a beautiful choreo of the North Stand, but also another festival of burnt chances. The match had an almost absurd course.

The Turkish side got to the Slavie penalty area 3 times in the whole match and the very first kick into the penalty area was unlucky, unless it was a shoulder, and in the eyes of the main referee, a penalty kick for Sivasspor.

Judge for yourself. The hand rule is perhaps the most convoluted one ever and there is a lot to be found, but also a lot to be hidden. Anyway, there’s something in there about where the jersey reaches is the arm and the arm is not the hand, but that’s not the primary point now.

But the home side couldn’t turn the huge pressure into a goal for a long time, the chances thrown away by Olayinka or Tecl are hard to fathom. The giant letdown was underlined by Sivasspor’s own goal, which was the only chance for Susians to score, the opponent simply had to score one themselves. But that’s all that happened and the match ended in a 1-1 draw, marking the end of this year’s European pilgrimage.

Here’s a look at a snippet of just a fraction of all of Slavia’s unconverted chances from this cursed European Conference League group of games lost. I’ll just add that no club in the European Conference League has produced more shots in total than Slavia.

After the failure, players and coaches always talked about the quality of the opponents. Don’t get mad at me, but I didn’t really see that one there. It should have been a clear promotion from first place. Yes, the opponents may have defended a bit better and more concentrated than the league average, but the course of the matches was not much different from the ones with Teplice or Pardubice, for example, where chances were converted.

That was the only difference. If your opponent allows you to have so many possessions, so many shots and chances, it just has to result in more goals and more points. Because in the words of the classic, “the more goals we score, the more points we get.”

With a slight exaggeration, we can also say that the 2 least football teams advanced from the group. Sivasspor, but especially Cluj, presents football strongly inspired by the Greek national team from Euro 2004.

Football, like life, is not always fair. But this, for me, cannot be hidden behind bad luck. You can have it in one game, but not in four in a row. With so many chances, it simply should have been different. It’s as if the players are under some pressure on the European stage and so they don’t convert what they easily do in the league.

Perhaps it’s a good thing it’s all over. Because this has been nothing but pure misery. Lessons to be learnt and look forward to the next seasons!

Source:: SK Slavia Prague, Twitter