Hellas Verona have generated enough expected goals, conceded few enough expected goals, and created enough chances to be sitting on 40.45 points through 34 matches of the Serie A season. They have 19.
That 21.45-point gap between expected and actual is not a rounding error. It is not a quirk of one bad weekend or a couple of disallowed goals. It is a full season of a team doing roughly mid-table work and getting relegation-zone results, week after week, for eight months.
The xPoints Chasm
At 40.45 expected points, Verona's underlying model would place them comfortably in the bottom half but nowhere near the trapdoor. That figure, built on shot quality created and conceded across 34 matches, describes a team scrapping for 13th or 14th. Instead, they sit on 19 points with a 3-10-21 record. Only three wins. Ten draws, which sounds like a team that hangs around in games. Twenty-one losses, which sounds like a team that doesn't.
Both things are somehow true.
The Finishing Problem
Verona have taken 382 shots this season and scored 23 goals. Their expected goals total is 32.25. That finishing delta of -9.25 goals is the kind of conversion deficit that turns draws into losses and narrow losses into comfortable ones for opponents. They are not generating elite chances, but they are generating significantly more than they are putting away. A team scoring to its xG has probably four or five more goals, which in a season full of 0-1 and 1-2 scorelines, is the difference between a handful of those 10 draws flipping to wins.
To be clear, the chance creation is not inspiring. An xG of 32.25 over 34 matches is 0.95 per game. That is bottom-five production. Verona are not a good attacking team being let down by luck. They are a below-average attacking team being let down by historically bad finishing.
The Defensive Collapse Nobody Expected
The defensive side is where things get genuinely painful. Verona's xGA of 40.96 is not great, roughly 1.20 per match, the profile of a team that bends but mostly holds. Instead they have conceded 56 goals, a defensive variance of +15.04. That means opponents have scored 15 more goals than the quality of their chances warranted.
Fifteen goals is not variance. It is a haunting.
Whether that is goalkeeping, set-piece collapses, or individual errors compounding into a psychological spiral, the data cannot say. What the data can say is that the shots Verona are facing, 437 across 34 matches, are not wildly out of proportion. They are being outshot but not besieged. The goals are coming from somewhere the xG model does not fully anticipate, and they keep coming.
What the Curse Is and What It Isn't
Honesty matters here. Verona's net xG is -8.71. They are being outplayed on underlying quality. Their schedule strength of 1.2 means they have faced a slightly harder-than-average set of opponents. Their injury burden of 48 is well below the league average of approximately 120, so they cannot blame absences. And 79 yellow cards with 4 reds suggests a side that is disciplined enough to not beat itself through stupidity.
This is a team with genuine limitations. A mid-table ceiling, not a European one. But the gap between that ceiling and their actual position, 21.45 points, is enormous. Verona are bad. They should not be this bad.
What Regression Would Actually Buy Them
With four matches remaining, regression is largely a matter for next season's planning. Even if Verona played to their per-match xPoints rate of 1.19 over the final stretch, that adds roughly 4.8 points, putting them around 24. That is still relegation. The curse did not cost them a European spot. It may have cost them survival. A team performing to its expected metrics across 38 matches finishes in the low 40s, comfortably clear of the drop.
Instead, Verona are staring at Serie B with a squad that, by nearly every process metric, did not deserve to be here. Pisa's Luck Index of -80 makes them Serie A's most cursed side. Verona, at -56, are second. But Verona's curse might be the crueler one, because it is happening in plain sight and almost nobody has noticed.