saint-Étienne and nice delivered their worst performance yet in the first leg of the L1/L2 playoff (0-0) at geoffroy-guichard on tuesday evening. the 51 minutes of play in the first half and 52 in the second yielded zero shots on target and a combined xG of just 0.41 — 0.11 for the home side and 0.30 for the visitors. according to opta, this was the lowest xG total for any full match in France’s top two divisions (including playoffs) since the 2022-2023 season.
only two other fixtures this season came close to that statistic: grenoble-bastia (0.55 xG, 0-0 on september 26th) and toulouse-strasbourg (0.56 xG, 1-0 on december 6th). the previous record low was set on december 12th 2023, when metz and brest combined for just 0.54 xG in a 0-1 loss.
saint-Étienne’s attack was particularly toothless, failing to attempt a single shot on target — a drought that has only occurred twice in the club’s last 20 seasons. their last similar outings were in april 2017 against Paris sg (0-5) and december 2024 against marseille (0-2), both at home. yet the lack of firepower was matched by defensive steel: behind psg’s 18 clean sheets, saint-Étienne sits second with 15, the best tally across both Ligue 1 and Ligue 2.