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.
River are the cleaner example. In their previous two league games they had 73% of the ball both times: 22 shots in the 1-1 at Sarmiento, 28 in the 1-0 over Estudiantes de Río Cuarto. In Córdoba they had 57%, 14 shots and 1.14 xG to Belgrano's 1.04, and won 3-0. I'd argued that River needing a win would hand Belgrano the kind of game they like, and for 45 minutes it more or less did. Then Galván scored, Correa added the second, and Belgrano's better spell by xG (0.68 after the break against 0.36 before it) came while chasing, the role I'd said suited them least.
Monterrey's version is even starker: 1.59 xG in the first half, 0.16 in the second. After Rossi and Corona scored three minutes apart they didn't need more, and Pachuca's 0.69 second-half xG produced only Rondón's goal. The ball was split 52-48, nothing like the lopsided home games I'd pointed to beforehand.
What I'm taking from it is that the score twenty minutes in can rewrite the who-carries-it question more than a season of patterns. Does anyone have a sensible way to account for that before kick-off, or is it just the part you accept you can't call?
