Benevento have spent their pre-season dismantling all comers, posting numbers that would raise eyebrows in competitive football and look almost absurd across friendlies. The Italian club are averaging 7.00 expected goals per match, a figure that captures just how one-sided their four warm-up games have been.
Twenty-eight goals have followed in that quartet of fixtures, the sort of return that suggests either brutal mismatches or a side hitting every chance that drops. The xG tally, tracked across each shot, confirms this is no fluke: Benevento are creating a volume and quality of chances that few sides can sustain once the points start to matter.
Context matters, but the output doesn't lie
Friendlies, of course, come with caveats. Opposition varies wildly, intensity dips, experimental line-ups blur the picture. Yet the sheer scale of chance creation here stands out. Seven expected goals per 90 minutes is elite even in the most open competitive environments; across four consecutive matches, it speaks to patterns rather than one wild afternoon.
Whether Benevento can carry this form into league action is the question that will define their campaign. Pre-season numbers have fooled before, but sides don't stumble into this kind of dominance by accident. The goals are real. The data says the chances were, too.