The first leg of the Ligue 1/Ligue 2 playoff between Saint-Étienne and Nice ended in a goalless draw under the rain in Saint-Étienne. The match was the lowest-scoring game in terms of xG (expected goals) in French top-flight and second-tier football over the past four seasons.
An empty clash at Geoffroy-Guichard
Saint-Étienne and Nice failed to muster any real threat during their first-leg playoff clash at Geoffroy-Guichard. The match saw neither side register a single shot on target throughout the 103 minutes played. The combined xG for both teams was a mere 0.41, with Saint-Étienne contributing 0.11 and Nice 0.30—the lowest figure recorded in a full match across Ligue 1, Ligue 2, or the playoffs since the 2022-2023 season.
Only two other matches have come close to this statistic
This season, only two other fixtures have approached this low xG threshold: Grenoble-Bastia (0.55 xG, 0-0) in September and Toulouse-Strasbourg (0.56 xG, 1-0) in December. A year earlier, the meeting between Metz and Brest on December 12, 2023, produced a similarly low xG of 0.54 despite ending in a 0-1 victory.
Saint-Étienne’s defensive resilience stands out
While the attack struggled, Saint-Étienne’s defense remained solid. The match marked the third time in 20 years that the club failed to register a shot on target in a league game—a feat only matched in April 2017 against Paris Saint-Germain (0-5) and December 2024 against Marseille (0-2). Yet, Saint-Étienne maintained the second-highest number of clean sheets in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 combined, with 15, trailing only Paris Saint-Germain’s 18.
