Lanús strikes once and beats a dominant Platense that crashes off the crossbar

Ivan Gomez's header crashed off the post in stoppage time, and it summed up Platense's afternoon pretty well: the home side dominated, created chances, but ran into a more efficient Lanús. Mauricio Pellegrino's team took all three points in Argentina's Primera División with a tight 1-0 win in Vicente Lopez, thanks to a single well-placed blow in the first half.

The match opened evenly, with chances at both ends and some early fouls breaking up the rhythm. In the 13th minute, Nicolas Retamar tested the keeper from outside the box and missed narrowly, and a minute later Eduardo Salvio answered with a left-footed shot that whistled past the post. Platense kept pressing down the flanks and piling up corners, but it was Lanús that struck first: in the 28th minute, Sasha Marcich whipped in a cross and Allan Wlk finished with his right foot from close range to make it 0-1.

The home side didn't fall apart, and in fact closed out the first half camped in Lanús territory. Before the break, Platense had a golden double chance through Bruno Sepulveda, who first headed at the goalkeeper on a tight angle and then, on the rebound, headed again just wide. It was probably Platense's most insistent stretch of the entire match.

A second half of siege without reward

The story didn't change much after the break: Platense kept pushing with crosses and corners, racking up 12 in total, but lacked precision in the final third. Gonzalo Lencina, who had come on for Bruno Sepulveda, tried a low shot that the Lanús goalkeeper saved. Lanús, for its part, defended with discipline and looked to break quickly through Ramiro Carrera and Yoshan Valois, both on from the bench.

The home side shuffled its lineup aggressively in search of an equalizer: Martin Palermo made three substitutions at once in the 78th minute, bringing on Guido Mainero, Maximiliano Amarfil and Nicolas Lopez to refresh the attack. The goal never came. In stoppage time, which ran to five minutes, Gonzalo Lencina tried a header that the goalkeeper once again turned away, and on the final play of the match, Ivan Gomez smashed a point-blank effort off the right post.

The numbers behind a fruitless dominance

The stats back up the sense of a match controlled by Platense but decided by Lanús:

Platense had nearly double the shots and far more control of play, but matched Lanús in shots on target and big chances, with one apiece. The xG calculated after the fact from the match's shots gives Platense 1.716 against Lanús's 1.188, a gap that backs up that edge in volume of play without it showing up on the scoreboard.

The result also runs counter to what our pre-match projection suggested: the preview gave Lanús a 39% chance of winning, against 24% for Platense and 37% for a draw, with expected goals of 0.74 for the home side and 1.01 for the visitors out of a total of 1.75. The final scoreline ended up tighter than that projection, but the outcome, a visiting win, did fall on the side the model considered more likely.

In the Group A standings, Lanús reached 23 points from 13 matches played (7 wins, 2 draws and 4 losses) and sits fourth, while Platense stayed on 11 points with just 2 wins, 5 draws and 6 losses in 13 outings, down in 13th place. The gap between the two sides in the table stands at 12 points, a margin that today's match, given how it played out, didn't fully reflect on the field.