Hellas Verona have played 35 matches of Serie A football this season and earned 20 points. Their expected points total is 40.64. That is not a rounding issue. That is not a model quirk. That is a 20.64-point gap between what the underlying chances suggested and what actually happened, the second-largest curse deficit in Serie A behind only Pisa.
A team with 40 points is fighting for survival but still breathing. A team with 20 points is already on the autopsy table.
The xPoints Chasm
Verona's 3 wins, 11 draws, and 21 losses produce a record that looks like a side with nothing going for it. But the chance-quality data tells a materially different story. Their expected goals for sits at 32.55, their expected goals against at 43.56, yielding a net xG of -11.01. That is bad. That is clearly a below-average team. But it is the profile of a side that scrapes together 38-42 points and spends the final weeks nervously checking other results, not one that is mathematically doomed in early May.
The 40.64 expected points figure accounts for the actual shot quality created and conceded in every match. Verona generated enough high-value chances, and limited enough high-value chances against, to be sitting roughly 15 spots higher on the table. Instead, they converted almost none of the close margins in their favor.
The Finishing Collapse
Verona have scored 24 goals from 32.55 xG worth of chances. That is a finishing delta of -8.55, meaning they have left more than eight goals on the pitch compared to what an average finishing side would have produced from the same opportunities. Across 389 shots taken, the conversion has been relentlessly poor.
Eight and a half goals does not sound catastrophic in isolation. Spread across 35 matches, it is roughly one goal every four games that should have gone in and did not. But in a league where Verona have drawn 11 times, even two or three of those converted chances flipping draws to wins rewrites the entire season.
The Defensive Bleeding
The other side of the ledger is arguably worse. Verona have conceded 57 goals against an xGA of 43.56, a defensive variance of +13.44. Opponents have overperformed their expected output against Verona by more than 13 goals. That is not a leaky defense in the structural sense. The shots conceded, 466, are not dramatically high. The quality of those shots should have produced a concession rate closer to 1.24 per game. Instead, Verona have shipped 1.63.
Some of this is goalkeeping. Some is bad timing. All of it is punishing.
What the Curse Is Not
Honesty matters here. Verona are not a secretly good team buried by variance. A net xG of -11.01 is genuinely poor. They are being outshot 466 to 389. Their schedule strength of 1.23 means they have faced a slightly harder-than-average slate, which explains some of the underlying deficit. And 83 yellow cards with 4 reds suggests a side that fouls frequently, likely because it is chasing games.
The curse is not that Verona deserve a European place. The curse is that they deserve to still be alive. The gap between 20 points and 40 is the gap between a corpse and a patient.
What Regression Could Have Bought Them
With three matches remaining, the math is brutal and largely settled. But a thought experiment is instructive. If Verona had converted finishing and defensive variance at league-average rates, splitting the difference on even half of their 20.64-point deficit, they would be sitting around 30-31 points. That is still deep in the relegation conversation, but it is the kind of total where a late-season run of form offers a lifeline.
Instead, Verona's remarkably low injury burden of 65, well below the league average of roughly 120, meant they could not even blame absences for the collapse. The squad was available. The chances were there. The margins went the wrong way 35 times in a row, give or take a couple.
Their Luck Index of -58 is the quiet kind of cursed. No one talks about it because the table looks deserved. The numbers say otherwise.