Early Prince Adu strike gives Viktoria Plzen a 1-0 win over Lillestrom in the Europa League

It took just nine minutes for the Arasen Stadion to go quiet. Prince Adu latched onto a through ball from Patrik Hrosovsky and finished with his right foot, low and inside the left post, to put Viktoria Plzen ahead. That goal turned out to be all the Czech side needed to take the three points in Norway: 0-1 final, in a match in the Europa League.

The curious part is that Lillestrom was, by far, the team with more of the ball, finishing with 64 percent possession to Plzen's 36 percent. But the ball didn't translate into real danger. The Norwegian side created chances fairly often, but almost always ran into Adam Gabriel or the well-organized Czech center backs, and its clearest attempts went wide or were saved without much trouble.

An early goal that shaped the match

Adu's goal came after a sequence that had already been building: minutes earlier, Gabriel himself had tried a header, and Lukas Cerv had also tested things from outside the box. Viktoria Plzen started the match better despite playing on the road, and that early lead let it sit back in an organized shape for the rest of the game.

Lillestrom kept trying. Gustav Nyheim had two attempts with his right foot, Fredrik Gulbrandsen missed two chances in the second half (one a header off a cross from Sturla Ottesen) and Eric Kitolano had a shot blocked from inside the box. Late on, with Thomas Lehne Olsen and Henrik Melland already on the field after substitutions, the home side kept pushing for an equalizer, but its shots either sailed wide or ran into Viktoria Plzen's resistance. Overall, the Czech side was more effective in front of goal: it finished with 17 shots to Lillestrom's 15, but with a clear edge in shots on target, 11 to 4.

That difference in finishing shows up as well in the match's estimated xG, calculated after the fact based on shot location: 0.763 for Lillestrom versus 1.539 for Viktoria Plzen. A number that backs up what was seen on the field: the Norwegian team piled up possession and attacking volume, but the Czech side was sharper when it came to finishing.

The result also runs counter to what we'd projected before the match. In our preview, we gave Lillestrom a 38 percent chance of winning, Viktoria Plzen 33 percent and a draw 29 percent, with expected goals of 1.44 for the home side and 1.33 for the visitors. What happened was, in large part, the opposite of that forecast: the less-favored team won, and did it with a single goal that was enough to control the rest of the match.

Where it leaves the standings

In the group table, the loss leaves Lillestrom with 1 point from 4 matches played, with no wins, one draw and three losses. Viktoria Plzen isn't having a great run in the league phase either: it has 3 points from the same 4 matches, with one win and three losses, but this time the result let it collect all three points and close the gap to the top of the table. The difference between the two sides in the standings is now just 2 points.

With yellow cards shown on both sides (Lars Ranger, Sampson Dweh, Filip Prebsl, Patrik Hrosovsky, Gustav Nyheim and Florian Wiegele all picked one up) and several substitutions forced by injury, the match was decided by a moment of individual quality early on. Lillestrom had the ball, but lacked the finishing touch; Viktoria Plzen had less of it, but made it count.