Cuiabá beat Athletic Club 3-0 in the Brasileirão Serie B, and the scoreline will be the first thing anyone remembers about this game. It should not be the only thing.
Buried in the numbers is a display from Lucas Belezi that had little to do with the final result. The defender completed 105 of his 117 passes, a rate of 90 percent, and got through 126 touches, more involvement than almost anyone else on the pitch. For long stretches, Athletic Club's attempts to build from the back ran through him.
Volume without reward
Passing numbers like that usually belong to a team dictating tempo and controlling territory. Here they sat awkwardly alongside a 3-0 defeat. Belezi kept the ball moving, kept finding team mates, kept Athletic Club ticking over in possession, but Cuiabá were the side that turned their moments into goals.
It is the kind of performance that gets a solid mark even in a heavy loss. Belezi finished with a match rating of 7.3, recognition that his individual job, retaining and circulating the ball under pressure, was done about as well as it could be.
What it says about the game
Football does not always reward the player who does the unglamorous work of stitching a team's play together. Belezi's afternoon is a reminder that a scoreline can tell one story while the underlying numbers tell another. Athletic Club had a metronome in midfield on Wednesday. They just did not have enough end product to go with it.