Down to 10 men from the 14th minute, Atlante fall 2-0 to Santos Laguna in Liga MX

Some games are decided long before the goals arrive. This was one of them: with just 14 minutes on the clock, Aaron Quiros was shown a red card, leaving Atlante to play more than three quarters of the match with ten men. The final score was 2-0 in favor of Santos Laguna, in a Liga MX match played at Estadio Banorte.

Oddly enough, the sending off was a back and forth affair: in the 12th minute, VAR had overturned an initial red card shown to Quiros, but two minutes later the referee ended up showing it to him anyway following a sequence of fouls in that area of the pitch. Down a man, Atlante held up better than expected for the rest of the first half, which ended scoreless at the break despite chances for Martin Sarrafiore, who even rattled the crossbar early in the second half.

How the goals went in

Santos Laguna, with more of the ball and more patience against the extra man, finally broke through in the 66th minute: Tahiel Jimenez finished with his left foot from inside the box, after an assist from Ezequiel Bullaude, to make it 1-0. Ten minutes later, in the 76th, the game was put to bed: a counterattack ended with Esteban Lozano slotting home with his right foot down the middle of the goal, assisted by Mauricio Cuevas, for the final 2-0. Atlante, a man down for the entire second half, had no response left in them.

The numbers behind the control

Possession and overall volume of play clearly reflect what unfolded on the field once the red card was shown: Santos Laguna controlled the ball for nearly the entire match, though Atlante still finished with more total shots.

The most striking figure comes from the post-match xG estimate: Atlante generated 1.934 expected goals to Santos Laguna's 0.829, a figure we calculate based on shot location. In other words, the home side had the clearer chances of the match despite playing a man down for 76 minutes, but they couldn't find the finish and ended up without a goal to show for it.

Before the match, our projection gave Atlante a 37% chance of winning, Santos Laguna 34%, and a draw 29%, with a tightly matched expected goals split (1.37 for the home side and 1.29 for the visitors). The early red card completely rewrote that script: the final result, with Santos Laguna cruising to the three points on the scoreboard despite conceding more clear-cut chances, runs quite counter to what we projected under normal eleven versus eleven conditions.

What it means in the standings

Santos Laguna move to 25 points from 16 matches played, with 8 wins, 1 draw and 7 losses, sitting fifth in the table. Atlante, meanwhile, remain on 14 points after 16 matches (3 wins, 5 draws and 8 losses), in 16th place, 11 points adrift of tonight's opponent. The numbers make clear that, chance creation aside, Atlante still can't translate good offensive performances into results, something this defeat with ten men only confirms.