Jornada 5 Preview: 2 v 4 and 3 v 5

By: Greg | October 3rd, 2008

It’s a big weekend in Portuguese club football. Second place Sporting welcome fourth spot Porto with open arms and hearts for another iteration of the clássico (which describes seventeen matches during the season for some reason). Meanwhile, fifth place Benfica travel to current third place surprise Leixões.

After this week, Sporting, Porto, and Benfica will all have played each other at least once. Early clássicos and derbies irk the shit out of me for three reasons: 1) This is hardly how the teams are going to end up as far as composition and shape, 2) The “Big” matches are done for a while after only a few weeks, 3) If it’s close between these teams late in the season, we can be sure they won’t be playing against one another in the final few weeks to determine the champion.

All my crying about having to watch so many good matches this early aside, here’s the way the weekend is going to shake out…

-= Jornada 5 =- All times local. This week’s edition of FixtureFacts focuses on the individual fixtures rather than the clubs themselves. In the lovely parenthesis next to each match you’ll learn the name of each referee who’s handling the given contest. There’s a good chance that at least one or two of the names listed below have accepted money in the past for the purpose of “tweaking” a game’s outcome.

Saturday, October 4th @ 19:45 — Naval v. Belenenses (Jorge Sousa)

Sunday, October 5th @ 16:00 — Académica v. Nacional (Artur Soares Dias)
Sunday, October 5th @ 16:00 — E. Amadora v. Trofense (Cosme Machado)
Sunday, October 5th @ 16:00 — Rio Ave v. P. Ferreira (Duarte Gomes)
Sunday, October 5th @ 19:45 — Sporting v. Porto (Lucílio Baptista)

Monday, October 6th @ 19:30 — V.Guimarães v. Braga (Pedro Proença)
Monday, October 6th @ 21:00 — Leixões v. Benfica (Olegário Benquerença)

Tuesday, October 7th @ 19:45 — V.Setúbal v. Marítimo (Vasco Santos)

Have a safe and happy weekend. I’ll be seeing you Monday with a pre-precap what with having matches stretched all the way to Tuesday this week. Kisses ALL AROUND!