Tuesday of woodwork in Club World Cup

Sometimes, a centimetre separates a ball from going in or hitting the woodwork. From a goal to a mistake that can end up condemning a team. On Tuesday's Club World Cup matches, in which groups C and D came to an end, there was the curiosity of the number of times the ball hit the post. So far, in the whole tournament, before the four matches played on this second day of the week, the statistics had recorded 19 posts -including crossbars, obviously- in 40 matches.

That is to say, practically one every two matches. Already in the first round, in Group C, the average had been exceeded. Angel di Maria was responsible for adding to that statistic in Benfica's 1-0 win over Bayern Munich. At the same time, Boca Juniors fought back to try to win their match against a combative Auckland City, which saw three times the woodwork save them against the ‘Xeneize’. Merentiel, Palacios and Di Lollo were unlucky.

That mark of three posts was already the record seen in this edition of the Club World Cup... until the Los Angeles FC-Flamengo match. In the first half alone, the record set hours earlier by Boca Juniors was surpassed. In total, four balls hit the post for the Brazilian team and one for the MLS side to make a total of five. Until the final stretch, despite so many clear chances, the score remained unchanged.

Curiously, the ‘MVP’ of the match went to a De Arrascaeta who did not score and who was the author of two of the five unsuccessful shots. In total, up to nine balls to the post in a single day and in the aforementioned three matches. Clearly exceeding the average for the tournament on a whimsical Tuesday.

To look a little in the mirror of other competitions, the last time a match was seen with at least four posts - it does not even reach five - in the Champions League was in May 2024 in Borussia Dortmund's 0-1 win over PSG in the semifinals in which the French team hit the post four times.