Hellas Verona have created enough quality chances to sit on 42 points. They have 20. That 22.16-point gap between expected and actual is the second-largest curse in Serie A, behind only Pisa's staggering -81 Luck Index. But where Pisa's misery has become a running storyline, Verona's season has been quietly, methodically brutal, a team undone by the math between what should happen and what does.
Their Luck Index stands at -60. They are rooted to the bottom of the table with 3 wins, 11 draws, and 22 losses. And the numbers say almost none of this needed to be this bad.
The 22-Point Void
Start with the central finding: 42.16 expected points against 20 actual. That delta of -22.16 is enormous. For context, a team on 42 points in Serie A this season would be sitting comfortably in the mid-table range, well clear of the relegation places Verona currently occupy. This is not a marginal gap. This is the difference between a season of quiet anonymity and a season of existential dread.
The gap comes from both ends of the pitch, but it is weighted heavily toward what Verona do with the ball and what opponents do with theirs.
A Finishing Crisis of Historic Proportions
Verona have scored 24 goals from 400 shots. Their expected goals total is 33.62. That is a finishing delta of -9.62, meaning they have left nearly 10 goals on the pitch through conversion alone.
Ten goals is a lot of margin. It is the difference between a few draws becoming wins and a few losses becoming draws. Spread across 36 matches, it amounts to roughly one goal every four games that the model expected and the scoreboard never recorded. Verona are not creating at a high volume, their 400 shots rank in the lower third of the division, but they are creating at a quality their forwards have consistently failed to convert.
Something has to go in. Most of the time, it doesn't.
A Defense That Gives Away Everything
The other side of the equation is arguably worse. Verona have conceded 58 goals against an xGA of 44.41, a defensive variance of +13.59. That means opponents have scored nearly 14 more goals than the quality of their chances suggested they would.
This is where curses live. A team can coach finishing to a degree, but conceding goals at this rate above expectation suggests a combination of goalkeeper misfortune, individual errors at the worst moments, and opponents hitting shots they have no statistical business hitting. Verona are being outshot 477 to 400, and being outshot is a real structural problem. But being outperformed on those shots by 13.59 goals is something else entirely.
What the Curse Is Not
Honesty demands a caveat. Verona's net xG is -10.79. They are being outshot. Their underlying profile is that of a below-average Serie A side, not a secretly elite one. A team with 33.62 xG and 44.41 xGA is expected to struggle. The curse did not create the struggle. It deepened it. It took a team that should be fighting near the bottom of the mid-table and buried them in the relegation zone with 20 points and a goal difference that reads like a condemnation.
Notably, their injury burden of 77 is well below the league average of roughly 120, and their schedule strength of 1.22, while slightly above average, is not extreme. This is not a team undone by absences or a brutal fixture list. The variance is coming from the pitch itself.
What Regression Would Actually Buy Them
With two matches remaining, there is almost nothing left to regress toward. The season is effectively sealed. But the theoretical exercise is instructive. If Verona had converted chances and conceded goals at expected rates across 36 matches, they would be sitting on approximately 42 points. That is the difference between 20th and somewhere around 12th or 13th.
Regression will not save them now. But it does clarify what happened here. Verona were bad. The numbers made them look catastrophic. Somewhere in the gap between those two words, 22.16 points disappeared, and almost nobody noticed.