Udinese fires 26 shots, dominates the game, and still loses to Cagliari

Udinese fired 26 shots, spent the afternoon camped in Cagliari's half, and finished with nothing to show for it. A single strike from Daniel Maldini, in the 53rd minute, was enough for Cagliari to walk away from the Bluenergy Stadium with all three points, winning 1-0. It was another reminder of that old soccer truth: dominating a game and winning it are not always the same thing.

The script was already written in the first half. Udinese piled up chance after chance without finding the net: Zaniolo tried his luck from inside the box, Kamara and Ekkelenkamp went for it from distance, and deep into stoppage time Idrissa Gueye, who had come on after Keinan Davis went down injured in the 36th minute, saw two shots saved by the opposing goalkeeper within the space of a minute. Still, the score stayed at 0-0 at the break, a scoreline that was starting to weigh on the home side more and more.

The second half opened with the same relentless home pressure: six corners in the first ten minutes, shots from Chakvetadze, Gueye again (twice more), Ebosse and Kabasele, all blocked or off target. Udinese kept arriving, kept creating, and kept failing to finish. Then, on Cagliari's only serious foray into that part of the field all match, the blow landed: Daniel Maldini finished with his left foot from the center of the box, low and inside the post, to make it 0-1. It was essentially the visitors' only shot on target that carried real danger, and it was enough.

Numbers that tell the story of frustration

The match statistics reflect exactly that story of dominance without reward. Udinese was far superior in possession and overall volume of play, but Cagliari made the one moment it had count.

Our own xG estimate, calculated from the shots taken in the match, backs up that impression: Udinese generated 2.05 expected goals compared to Cagliari's 0.61. In other words, by that after-the-fact measure, the home side deserved far more than what the scoreline ultimately showed.

Beforehand, our model had projected a much closer match than what actually played out: 43% odds for Udinese, 31% for a draw, and 26% for Cagliari, with expected goals of 1.37 for the home side and 1.02 for the visitors. What happened was the exact opposite of the most likely outcome: despite the territorial dominance we had projected for Udinese, it was Cagliari that took the entire match with a single well-placed shot.

What it means in the standings

The result carries weight in the Serie A table. Cagliari climbs to 12 points from 5 matches played (4 wins and 1 loss) and moves into third place, just one point behind the top two spots. Udinese, meanwhile, stays on 4 points after the same number of matches (1 win, 1 draw and 3 losses) and sits in 13th place, with a negative goal difference that is starting to pile up. The gap between the two sides now stands at 8 points in the table.

With substitutions like Chakvetadze, Bayo, Zanoli and Unai Gomez, Udinese searched for answers in attack without success, while Cagliari, already ahead on the scoreboard, managed the rest of the match with the introductions of Sugawara, Kevin Carlos, Gagliardini and Fadera. The final takeaway is clear: Udinese produced the performance, but Cagliari produced the goal, and in the end that is the only thing that counts on the scoreboard.