Eight bells for Europa as Porto run riot

Eight goals. Twenty-eight shots. Fifteen on target. Europa FC's supporters came for a Champions League occasion and got a demonstration instead, the sort of scoreline that makes the statistician check the arithmetic twice and then check it a third time in case the first two were flattering.

The possession read 73 per cent to 27. That is not a contest, it is a subscription. Porto completed 654 passes from 696 attempts; Europa completed 238 from 298. For those keeping score at home, and somebody should, that is 456 more passes finding a teammate in a different shirt. Europa's expected goals figure was 0.12. Porto's was 3.94, and they beat it comfortably, which tells you something about the difference between the chances a model expects and the ones Duarte Xavier and Rafael Semedo decided to take anyway.

Xavier scored four. Four goals, five key passes, six shots, five on target, a match rating of 10.0. Semedo matched the rating with two goals and two assists, four key passes, nine dribbles and 57 completed passes from 65. Vando Sérgio added two more, five shots, three on target, and a 9.6. Daniel Carvalho did the unglamorous part with four interceptions and 91 passes from 98, which is the sort of line that wins you nothing in the highlights and everything in the dressing room.

Iuri Fiteira came on at half-time and produced an assist and a key pass, which is a decent return for forty-five minutes and a fair indication of how the evening was going for the home defence. Pedro Couto, meanwhile, took five shots worth 0.83 expected goals and finished with none of the eight, which is the only statistic on Porto's sheet that reads like a complaint.

Europa had two shots. One was on target. They won no corners and committed sixteen fouls without a single yellow card, which is either admirable discipline or a sign that the referee had seen enough and wanted to go home. Porto committed eight fouls and also collected nothing in the book. The match finished eleven against eleven, which is the closest the sides came to parity all night.

"We kept the ball, we moved them, and the goals came," Semedo said afterwards, with the calm of a man who had spent ninety minutes doing exactly as he pleased. "Four for Duarte, two for me, two for Vando. Nobody is counting, but I am."

Eight is the number that will sit at the top of the page. It is also, for what it is worth, precisely the number of goals by which a Champions League tie can be settled in a single evening, and the sort of margin that turns a group table into a warning. Porto's next assignment is not yet fixed; Europa's is a conversation about the 27 per cent.

One number to take away, and it is not the eight. It is 0.12 against 3.94: the home side created roughly one good chance in ninety minutes, the visitors created four clear ones and scored eight times. That is not variance. That is a team being read, page by page, and the final figure, the one that will follow Europa around, is the one in the scoreline.