Celta Vigo vs Alaves

Celta Vigo's dominant first-half performance looked destined to validate our prediction of a 2-0 home victory. Ferran Jutgla struck twice—opening the scoring in the 19th minute before doubling the lead in the 37th—while Héctor Álvarez added a third in the 27th minute, giving the hosts an apparently commanding 3-0 advantage. Everything aligned with the pre-match narrative: Celta controlled possession and created clear-cut chances while Alavés operated defensively and struggled to generate attacking threat.

Then Alavés executed an improbable second-half turnaround. Toni Martínez reduced the deficit before halftime in the 45th minute, then sparked a remarkable comeback by netting twice more in the 50th and 74th minutes. Alavés equalized through Alfonso Pérez in the 50th and found the decisive fourth through Abdelaziz Rebbach in the 78th. Our model's prediction of a 2-0 Celta win proved fundamentally wrong—we missed both the result direction and the eventual 4-3 scoreline entirely. The pre-match assessment of Alavés' defensive solidity preventing attacking opportunities failed to account for their capacity to exploit a defensive collapse after the interval, while Celta's inability to maintain control when most needed undermined the home-advantage advantage we'd emphasized. This match serves as a reminder that first-half dominance, however convincing, remains conditional on defensive stability. Celta's collapse and Alavés' conversion efficiency in the second half exposed the limitations of possession-based predictions when execution falters.