9.1 points: the gap between Real Betis and their chances
Second in the Spanish First Division on 29 points, Real Betis should be ninth — and the numbers say their defence, not their finishing, is doing the work.
The ball runs loose in the Betis box and the crowd rises before it has to, that low collective intake of breath that has become the sound of this season. Someone blocks it. Someone else hooks it clear. The whistle goes, and the noise turns to something warmer, almost amused, as if the home end has begun to suspect its own team is living a charmed life and has decided to enjoy it.
Fourteen games in, Real Betis are second in the Spanish First Division with 29 points. The chances they have made and allowed tell a different story: 19.9 points, which would place them ninth. The gap is 9.1, and it is not the forwards who have opened it. Betis have scored 22 from chances worth 21.8 — a rounding error either way. At the other end, they have conceded 15 from an expected 20.7. That is 5.7 goals that never arrived, and it is why the table looks the way it does.
Víctor Iglesias, appointed in July, has built a side that bends without breaking. It is not a fluke of one afternoon. On expected points, Athletico Madrid lead with 29.2 and have 34; Girona, Ponferrada, Barcelona and Real Madrid all sit above Betis in the merit table, and Villarreal, sixth on 21.4, have 26 points of their own. The division is full of teams outrunning their chances. Betis are simply the furthest ahead.
"We know what the games have looked like," one of them said afterwards, and the shrug said the rest. A defence in this mood can carry a season. Whether it can carry one all the way is the story of the months to come — and the home end, rising again as the ball comes in, already knows it.