Missed Penalties Haunt Liga MX Sides Across Three Matchday Seven Games

The clearest thread running through Liga MX Apertura Matchday Seven is not the goals scored but the goals that were not. Both the Atlas-Atlante and Tigres-Necaxa fixtures produced missed penalties at critical moments, and in each case the team that fluffed the spot-kick was unable to find a winner. Jhojan Julio spurned Atlante's chance in the 35th minute with the score at 1-0 to Atlas, and Julián Carranza wasted Necaxa's opportunity in the 24th minute with his side already ahead. Both shooters were punished immediately by the logic of football: the teams they failed to finish off equalised before half-time in each match.

The mechanism was similar in both games. Atlante, sitting on 36 percent possession in a 5-3-2 mirror of Atlas's own shape, were relying almost entirely on transitions and set-piece moments to threaten Hernán Crespo's side. Julio's miss removed the buffer that would have allowed them to sit deep with confidence. Atlas duly pressed on, and although Martín Sarrafiore's equaliser came early in the second half, Atlante could not sustain enough pressure to nick a winner, finishing with eight shots to Atlas's 16. At the Estadio Universitario, Necaxa's 3-4-2-1 had disrupted Tigres well in the opening quarter, with Owen González scoring in the 12th minute. Carranza's penalty miss two minutes after Tigres drew level at 1-0 in their favour effectively flattened Necaxa's momentum. Tigres, despite 21 shots and 58 percent possession, could not manufacture a second, leaving both clubs marooned in the bottom half of the table.

The Juarez-Pachuca fixture on September 5th carried no penalty subplot but reinforced the same broader theme of game management deciding outcomes. Pachuca were disciplined and compact in their own 4-2-3-1, allowing Juarez, who finished the match with 52 percent possession, to dominate the ball without creating genuine danger: Juarez managed just one shot on target in 90 minutes. Salomón Rondón's 53rd-minute header broke the deadlock against the run of statistical possession, and Alan Bautista's 90th-minute finish sealed it. The result means Juarez remain the only winless side in the division after seven rounds, sitting 18th with zero points.

The disciplinary record in Guadalajara tells a secondary story. Five yellow cards, spread across both teams in the Atlas-Atlante game, and the ten bookings accumulated in the Juarez-Pachuca fixture point to physical, contested encounters where neither side was comfortable enough on the ball to simply pass through pressure. Miguel Herrera's Atlante gave away fouls liberally when out of possession, a recognisable feature of his pressing-heavy setups, but lacked the quality to capitalise when they did win the ball back in dangerous areas.

Taken together, Matchday Seven offered a reminder that penalty efficiency is not a footnote but a genuine competitive separator. Both Atlante and Necaxa had moments to take three points; neither converted them, and both settled for one instead. In a congested table where Atlante sit 14th on seven points and Necaxa are 13th on eight, those dropped points could prove damaging before the Apertura reaches its decisive stretch.