By colorado 
Why I Dug Into This Game
Alright, so yesterday evening I got curious about that Real Madrid versus Athletic Bilbao game everyone was buzzing about. I kept seeing highlights everywhere, you know? So I thought, hey, instead of just watching clips, why not really dive into the numbers myself? See what the actual story was beyond the goals.
Getting My Hands Dirty
First thing this morning, I brewed a big pot of coffee and grabbed my laptop. My goal was simple: gather the key stats for both teams from that match and line ’em up side-by-side. No fancy tools, just me and a spreadsheet. I opened up Excel – good old faithful. Made two columns: one for Real Madrid, one for Bilbao.
Then came the digging. I hopped onto a few football stats websites I trust. Not gonna lie, it took some clicking around. I wanted stuff like shots on target, possession percentage, passes completed, tackles, fouls… all the basics but enough to get a decent picture. I just copied what I found and dumped it straight into my spreadsheet, row by row.
Hit a snag almost right away though. Some sites showed slightly different numbers for the same stat! Like, one site had possession at 58% for Madrid, another said 60%. Annoying, right? I figured, okay, maybe I need to stick with just one source to keep things fair and not drive myself nuts. So I picked the site I felt usually gets it right and stuck with that for everything.
Making Sense of the Mess
Once I had all the numbers copied over, my spreadsheet looked like a chaotic mess. Just a bunch of numbers floating there. I needed to make it easy to see where the differences were big. I resorted to simple subtraction. For each stat, I calculated the difference between Madrid and Bilbao. Stuff like:
- Shots: Madrid 18 – Bilbao 8 → Difference: +10 Madrid
- Pass Accuracy: Madrid 92% – Bilbao 78% → Difference: +14% Madrid
I also added some basic formatting. Colored cells where one team was clearly better, bolded the final scores. Simple stuff, but it helped.
While doing this, a few things jumped out at me. Like, wow, the pass accuracy difference was huge! And Bilbao actually made more tackles? Didn’t expect that. Started scribbling down these little observations in my notebook next to the laptop.
Wrapping It Up and Sharing
After maybe an hour or so (coffee helped), I felt like I had something solid. A clear side-by-side comparison with the numbers that really mattered, plus my little notes on what seemed surprising or important based on the gaps.
Honestly, doing it manually like this isn’t the fastest, and yeah, maybe I fat-fingered a stat or two. But it feels way more real than just reading someone else’s summary. You actually see where one team dominated or where it was really close.
The biggest takeaway for me wasn’t just who won (we all saw that!), but how Madrid controlled the game so effectively through passing. The Bilbao effort, especially in winning the ball back, really showed too.
So that’s my little stat dive for today. Messy, manual, but totally worth it to satisfy that curiosity bug! Maybe next time I’ll try for a midweek game. Coffee’s on me.