Head-to-head records are used constantly in American sports analysis and treated skeptically in European soccer. The difference in usefulness comes from how often the two teams actually play.
Schedule structure determines the sample
American leagues weight their schedules heavily toward division rivals, so two teams in the same division meet repeatedly within a single season.
Across several seasons that produces a body of meetings between rosters that are largely the same, which is enough data to say something meaningful about a matchup.
European league clubs meet exactly twice a season, once at each ground, and reaching a comparable sample requires going back far enough that both squads have been rebuilt.
Squad turnover destroys the older data
Soccer squads change substantially every summer through transfers, and a club may replace a large portion of its starting eleven within two windows.
By the time enough meetings have accumulated to analyze, the teams involved share little beyond a name and a stadium with the ones that played the early matches.
American rosters also change, but the draft, trade deadlines and salary caps produce turnover that is slower and more visible than an open transfer market.
Scoring rate compounds the problem
Basketball produces enough scoring events per game that a single result carries reasonable information about the relative strength of two teams.
Soccer produces few, so an individual match tells you far less, and a head-to-head record of a handful of low-scoring games is mostly noise.
Combining a small number of meetings with a high noise level per meeting is the worst possible position for drawing a conclusion.
Where soccer head-to-head still works
Tactical matchups persist longer than personnel when the same coach is present at both clubs, because approach and shape are the coach's property rather than the squad's.
Venue effects also persist, since a stadium's dimensions, surface and crowd behavior remain stable while players come and go.
Records filtered to a single venue with the same two coaches are small but not meaningless, which is the narrow case where the statistic earns its place in a preview.
Reading American analysis carefully
An American reader arriving at soccer previews often expects head-to-head to carry the weight it carries in domestic sports, and it does not.
Recognizing that the difference is structural rather than cultural makes the skepticism easier to accept, because it follows directly from how the schedules are built.
The useful translation is to treat a European head-to-head the way an American analyst treats an interconference series: interesting history, too few games to lean on, and worth less than current form.