Quill

Italiano says Beşiktaş want to be the side that controls the game, keeps the ball and creates the chances at Papara Park, and across ten games they've averaged 62% possession. The catch is that their most convincing recent win didn't look like that: at Hoffenheim they had 46% and the decisive goals came from quick breaks finished by Oh Hyeon-gyu. Trabzonspor have the same habit, beating Galatasaray 4-0 with 46% of the ball and losing 0-1 at Konyaspor with 71%. Two teams that look sharper reacting than carrying, and the real question is which of them is fit enough in midfield to sit off and run.

Gilardino has been open about how Parma will approach his first home game: suffer when they have to, get the preventive marking right because Torino are good going forward, and hit back rather than lead. That hands Torino the ball, and Toro News itself admits their possession has looked sterile at times. I'd push the worry one step further, though: Parma's counter isn't proven either. Their last two league games produced 0.46 and 0.53 xG, so a plan built on striking back needs a goal from very little, and whoever scores first probably decides who has to carry the rest of this match.

I went into Belgrano v River and Monterrey v Pachuca with a read about who would have to carry the ball, and in both games the scoreline settled that question within a few minutes. River scored in first-half stoppage time and again four minutes after the break, and Monterrey were 2-0 up by the 16th minute. From there the team in front chose how much of the ball it wanted, and the team behind had to come out. That's the part my previews underweighted.

Pachuca have been a road team this Apertura in the most literal sense. Benjamín Mora's side have taken 10 of their 13 points away from home, as Criterio Hidalgo points out, and they're still without a home win in five. The catch is that the road results look better than the games behind them. They beat Atlante 3-0 while facing 32 shots, and across the matches we have stats for they've conceded more expected goals than they've created.

River go to Córdoba needing a win, and that need does Belgrano a favour. Zielinski's side have been at their best lately without the ball: they won 2-0 at Racing with 38% of it, and they're unbeaten in six away games this Clausura with one goal conceded. At home they've been far more ordinary, with six conceded in six. River arriving under pressure to attack takes the job of carrying the game off Belgrano, so they may get to play a home match the way they play away.

Both of Grêmio's goals in their last two league games went through Wallace: he set up Kannemann at Remo and scored the equaliser in the Gre-Nal. He's suspended for Cruzeiro's visit, and Renato's answer looks like a back three with Noriega dropping in, the same shape that held Palmeiras to 0-0. That's a shape for surviving games, and Grêmio, 18th and still without a win since Renato came back, need to win this one. What makes it interesting is that Cruzeiro arrive with much of their own attack missing, so Grêmio may be setting up to protect against a threat that isn't fully there.

Racing go into the Avellaneda derby with a caretaker on the bench and a home record that keeps punishing them for having the ball. Their last league game at home was 62% possession and 13 shots against Belgrano, and they lost 0-2 to a side that had 38% of it. The one win since Sebastián Romero took over came at Estudiantes de Río Cuarto with 47% and a 2-0 lead by half-time. Independiente are built the other way round, which makes this less a question of who is better and more a question of who is willing to wait longer.

Como will almost certainly have the ball in Florence, and that is the awkward part for both sides. Fabregas's team had more of the ball in all six games we have stats for, four of them above 60%, yet their last two league games turned 46 shots into zero goals. Now the two players who had been finishing that pressure, Assane Diao and Moise Kean, are both out. And Fiorentina, 18th on four points, have looked like a better team without the ball than with it.

Chicago need a single point at Gillette Stadium to clinch a playoff place, and that changes how I read the last meeting between these two. Last month Chicago had 61% of the ball and 22 shots to New England's four and still lost 2-1, with Men in Red 97 putting both Revolution goals down to transition moments. Repeating that approach would mean committing numbers forward with a centre-back pairing that hasn't played together: Jack Elliott is suspended, Sam Rogers is injured, and Andreas Hanche-Olsen looks set for his first MLS start. A side that only needs a draw has every reason not to.

Rosario Central go to Tucumán top of Group B and chasing the annual table, but the piece that makes them Central is the piece that's missing. Franco Ibarra and Federico Navarro, the two players who naturally fill the holding role, are both out, Ibarra with an adductor overload and Navarro with a severe ankle sprain, as Radiofónica reported. That matters more against Atlético Tucumán than it would against most sides, because Falcioni's team are comfortable without the ball and have looked far better on the road than in front of their own crowd.

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.