Oh well, maybe in a few years someone will put in a PEP to use walrus := with match/case to give match assignment and give the old Python guard something to _really_ clutch pearls about.
x = match expr:
case 'a':
1
case 'b':
2
case _:
0
> Statement vs. Expression. Some suggestions centered around the idea of making match an expression rather than a statement. However, this would fit poorly with Python's statement-oriented nature and lead to unusually long and complex expressions and the need to invent new syntactic constructs or break well established syntactic rules. An obvious consequence of match as an expression would be that case clauses could no longer have arbitrary blocks of code attached, but only a single expression. Overall, the strong limitations could in no way offset the slight simplification in some special use cases.
You can dislike this language characteristic, but it's the right call to stay congruent.