Turkiye's shooting woes explained: Why statistics are misleading when it comes to USMNT's next World Cup foe

As Turkiye prepare to face the United States men's national team in the World Cup, it's a match that isn' what people expected before the tournament began. Instead of a clash where the winner would win the group its a game with nothing at stake. After Turkiye lost their first two matches of the group stage, even when finishing the entire second half up a man they're eliminated from the tournament, meanwhile the USMNT has clinched first place in Group D.

This is a surprising set of results for Turkiye, who might have been a potential dark horse in this tournament to make a deep run. And they're feeling pretty unlucky about it all. No team has ever taken as many shots as Turkiye's 62 without scoring a goal since they were recorded as a statistic beginning in 1966. Heading into Thursday's match against the USMNT, Turkiye attacker Kenan Yikdiz viewed that as a good thing, saying, "In both games we were the better team," in their pre-match press conference. The Juventus forward offered reasons why he thought that.

"Two games, like I said before, we were the better team. I think in the statistics we were in a lot of places first place, we had the most shots, we had the most duels in the area of the other team's side, so I think in both games we did good, we did our best, that shows in the statistics, but how it is in football statistics don't win the game," Yildiz said. "In the end, they scored, and we didn't, and that's why we went out."

Let's take a look at those claims. For those keeping track at home, even with those 62 shots, Turkiye were only 11th in Expected goals with an xG of 3.53 through those two games. Also, when that's broken down into xG per shot, it comes out to .057, which is the fourth-worst mark of any team at the World Cup, ahead of only Paraguay, Curacao, and Tunisia. Defensively, Turkiye were mostly fine with an expected goal difference of 2.02, which is 11th of all teams, but when most of these teams around them are plucky underdogs who need to take shots when they can, and Turkiye are a side who were the favorites, this doesn't add up.

And even this set of stats flatters Turkey. They played an entire half of their second match up a man vs. Paraguay. That means they've played a quarter of their minutes with a man advantage and still managed to be the fourth-worst team at the tournament by expected goals per shot. What exactly was the advantage of that extra man again?

This is a point where, playing Football Manager, you'd add the instruction to get the ball into the box. That's not what Turkiye's coach Vincenzo Montella thinks though. Hearing him talk you realize the all shots are good shots mentality is coming from the top. He followed Yildiz in relying on the stats where Turkiye were first (and ignoring the ones where they were not), during a grandstand moment that felt like he was fighting for his own job.

"Now, football is a sport where we need to score. I know that we could not do this, but we were close to scoring. We cannot blame our players for what they've done during the last two games. We cannot destroy everyone," Montella said.

So as Turkiye prepares to face the United States, it could be good practice for Matt Freese or Matt Turner in net because they don't seem like a team who are ready to change anything, and that could work in the USMNT's favor.

Date: Thursday, June 25 | Time: 10 p.m. ETLocation: SoFi Stadium -- Inglewood, Calif.TV: Fox (Eng), Telemundo (Spa) | Live stream: Fubo (Try for free)Odds: Turkiye +290; Draw +320; USMNT -125