Quill

The KBO regular season ends with two games that carry completely different kinds of pressure. KIA and LG meet in Gwangju for the third seed, and the awkward part is that the loser isn't knocked out, just sent into a wild card series after a single day off. That puts the weight on the late innings more than the early ones: a manager who empties his bullpen chasing this game and still loses walks into the wild card with tired arms. Over in Daegu, Samsung have nothing left to win, while KT have a whole list of things to chase.

Independiente have been a far better team away than at home this Clausura: four wins from five on the road with three goals conceded, against one win in six at home. That's usually the profile of a side happy to let the hosts come at them, and Talleres, last in Zone A on eight points, have little choice but to come at them. The twist is that the two pieces a counter-punching away side leans on most are both compromised here. The player who turns a regain into an attack is suspended, and the midfielder who shields the back four is one booking away from missing the Racing derby.

Pumas against Cruz Azul has an awkward shape, because the visiting coach is the one saying Pumas deserve more points than they have. Joel Huiqui said exactly that before the match, and the place where those points have leaked is easy to find: 16 conceded in ten league games, and only one clean sheet, as TUDN's Rodrigo Celorio put it. Cruz Azul, meanwhile, are the side whose games tend to come apart at both ends. So I'm less interested in who is better on paper than in whether anyone on the pitch is actually set up to keep this quiet.

Both Porto Alegre clubs go into this Gre-Nal in the relegation zone, Inter 17th on 31 points and Grêmio 18th on 30, each with a coach who has only been in the job a few weeks. The awkward part is that neither side has looked like a team that wants the ball. Inter have averaged around 40% possession in the games we have stats for, and their best recent result, the 2-1 over Corinthians, came with 28% of it. So Grêmio, at home, will probably be the ones asked to carry the game, and from open play their numbers don't really back that up.

Celtic's three straight defeats before the break are being read as a crisis, but look at who they lost to: Rangers twice and Ferencvaros in Europe, as BBC Sport lays out. Their routine league away form hasn't moved, with three wins from three on the road, eight scored and two conceded on our table. So the question at Fir Park isn't really whether Celtic have fallen apart. It's whether Motherwell can drag this into the kind of game Celtic have actually been losing, and that's a big ask for a side whose own trouble has been at home.

Tokyo Verdy's first match under Naoki Soma comes against the side with one of the best goal records in J1, and the usual new-coach story doesn't quite fit. Soma was named only a few days before this match, after Hiroshi Jofuku's dismissal, and in between his squad travelled to Tottori for an Emperor's Cup tie that finished 0-0. That leaves very little time to change how the team plays. Whatever bounce Verdy get is more likely to come from simpler instructions than from a new system.

Hernán Crespo wants this Clásico Tapatío played at full intensity, with Chivas under pressure and the crowd making them uncomfortable, and the team news seems to hand him the right moment: Chivas are without Luis Romo, Omar Govea, Bryan González and José Castillo. The catch is Atlas's own split. In five home games they've won once, scored five and conceded eight; away from home they've won four of five and scored eleven. Crespo is asking a team that has looked best when the other side has to open the game up to be the one that opens it up.

Both of the FIFA ASEAN Cup's last games are at Gelora Bung Karno in Jakarta, and the thread running through them is that all four teams have shown, at some point in this tournament, that they're fine without the ball. In the final that sets up awkwardly for Indonesia, who are the home side in their own stadium and will feel they have to set the pace against a Thailand team that is happy not to. In the third-place match it's the reverse problem: Malaysia and Vietnam have both spent long spells on the ball against organised defences and come away with nothing.

Estudiantes de Río Cuarto against Racing looks like two struggling sides meeting near the bottom of the table, 15th and 14th on our Clausura standings, but they struggle in opposite ways and that shapes what this game is likely to look like. Estudiantes have scored five league goals in ten matches and just one in five at home, yet they've also conceded only three at home. Racing are the reverse: they keep the ball, around 59% in the games we have numbers for, and still give up more shots on target than they take. One team is built to wait, the other keeps volunteering to break a block down.

LG and KIA meet for a third straight day at LG's home park, and LG lost both of the first two in the ninth inning: tied 4-4 in the first game, they gave up one; up 5-3 going into the top of the ninth in the second, they gave up three. Put that next to the SSG series just before it, where LG carried a 3-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth and lost 4-3, and three of LG's five straight defeats have been decided in the final inning. With the two clubs separated by a single point of win percentage for third place, .548 against .547 on our table, the opening innings of this one may tell you surprisingly little.

Two domestic games in this slate share the same outline: a Euroleague team on short rest, away to a side that has had most of the week off. Barcelona go to Murcia, Paris go to Le Mans, and it's tempting to read it as the same story twice. I don't think it is. Where the tired legs come from, and what the home team actually wants the game to look like, make these two quite different.

Yokohama vs Hanshin is one of those late-season games where the table has already said everything. On our standings, Hanshin at 77-60 with two draws can't drop below the Giants' finished 76-64 even if they lose all four of their remaining games, and Hiroshima can no longer reach Yokohama's 70 wins. So this is Yokohama's last regular-season game before the first stage of the playoffs, and for Hanshin it's one of four left before they sit and wait.