Hellas Verona created enough chances to finish with 43 points. They finished with 21. That 22-point gap between expected and actual is one of the largest in any major European league this season, and almost nobody is talking about it.
Verona are bad. Let's establish that upfront. A net xG of -14.75 across 38 matches, being outshot 513 to 422, and conceding over 50 expected goals does not describe a side that belongs in the top half. But it does describe a side that belongs somewhere other than dead last in the form table with 3 wins from 38 games. The numbers say Verona should be mediocre. What happened to them was considerably worse than mediocre.
The 22-Point Void
Hellas Verona's xPoints total of 43.05 would have placed them comfortably in the lower-middle of Serie A. Not safe by any luxurious margin, but in a position where survival is a matter of professionalism rather than prayer. Instead, 21 points and a record of 3-12-23 put them through the kind of season that gets entire coaching staffs replaced and squad values halved.
The xPoints delta of -22.05 is the second-worst luck index in the division. Only Pisa, at -89 on the CURSD Luck Index, had a more statistically painful season. Verona's Luck Index of -65 reflects a team that lost almost every close game they played, turned 12 draws into a graveyard of near-misses, and watched the margins go against them week after week after week.
Twelve draws from 38 matches. That is a team living on the edge of results and falling off almost every time it mattered.
The Finishing Collapse
Verona scored 25 goals from 35.58 xG. That is a finishing delta of -10.58 goals, meaning they left more than ten goals on the pitch across the season relative to the quality of chances they created. To put that in perspective, ten goals is roughly the difference between relegation and 14th place in a typical Serie A table.
This was not a team that failed to create. Their 422 shots were below the league median but not drastically so. The problem was conversion. When Verona got into dangerous positions, they missed. Repeatedly. Systematically. At a rate that suggests a combination of individual quality limitations and genuinely rotten variance.
The Defensive Penalty
On the other side, Verona conceded 61 goals against an xGA of 50.33, a defensive variance of +10.67. Their defense was being punished at a rate well beyond what the quality of chances against them would suggest. Opponents didn't just score, they scored at an elevated clip, converting opportunities that on average would have been saved or missed.
Combine the two variances and you get a team bleeding more than 21 goals across both ends of the pitch relative to expected outcomes. That is an extraordinary volume of bad luck concentrated into a single season.
What the Curse Is Not
It is not an explanation for a secretly great team. Verona were outshot, out-created, and carried a negative net xG of nearly 15 goals. Their schedule strength of 1.3 means they faced a harder-than-average set of opponents, which partially explains the raw xGA. Their injury burden of 78, well below the league average of 120, means they cannot blame absences. They had their players available. Those players were, on the whole, not good enough for Serie A.
But "not good enough" and "3 wins from 38" are different sentences. The data suggests Verona were a 40-to-45 point team trapped inside a 21-point season.
What Regression Would Actually Buy Them
If Verona's finishing and defensive variance regressed to league-average conversion rates, the model gives them something in the range of 40 to 44 points. That is survival. Not comfort, not ambition, but survival. The kind of season where you finish 15th and nobody writes a single article about you.
Instead, they are relegated and facing a rebuild in Serie B with a squad that, statistically, was only slightly below the quality threshold for staying up. The gap between what the numbers say Verona were and what the table says they were is 22 points wide.
Sometimes the cruelest curses are the quiet ones.