Alright, folks, let me walk you through how I tackled digging up those Barcelona vs Osasuna stats today. Woke up thinking it’d be quick since both La Liga teams play so often, right? Pulled my laptop open around coffee time and went straight to the league’s official site. Typed in last five years head-to-head, expecting clean tables ready to copy-paste.
The Reality Check
Man, was I wrong. First, the stats section split everything into tiny pieces – possession stats here, shots there, cards in another tab. Had to click through like ten pages just to piece together one match! Then realized their filter broke when I set date range 2019-2024. Refreshed three times before it finally showed fixtures, but guess what? Data for 2020 was straight-up missing. Classic.
Spreadsheet Hell
Opened Excel ready to dump numbers, but nah. Copied a table of pass completion rates – boom, stats pasted as one jumbled paragraph. Spent 20 minutes manually separating numbers with semicolons. Got elbow-deep fixing formats when I noticed:
- The 2023 Copa del Rey final showed Barça with 68% possession
- But their own match report had it at 71% 🤷♂️
Had to cross-check three sources like a detective. Twitter folks pointed me to some fan forum archives for older seasons. Created columns for home/away splits halfway through when I realized Osasuna’s stats looked way better at home.
Final Tally and Lessons
After four hours? Made a simple comparison sheet with key stuff:
- Average goals per match last five meetings (spoiler: it’s 3.2)
- How many red cards Osasuna picked up at Camp Nou
- Barcelona’s win rate vs draw/loss breakdown
Biggest takeaway? Never trust single-source data. Found errors in two “reliable” stats platforms. Also learned backup your work every damn time – Excel crashed at hour three and I nearly cried. Anyways, stats don’t lie but collecting them sure tries to break ya.
