Jornada 8 Recap: Leixões Still At the Top

Double u tee eff is going on with the league this season? How in the name of all that is holy as well as unholy are Leixões managing to keep up this ridiculous pace? They have 19 points in 8 matches and sit precariously at the top of the league with a 1 point lead on Benfica.

I’m well aware that the overall point totals are somewhat small at this point and therefore a three point swing here or zero points there will result in a massive fire drill, but jeez. Good for them: at least Porto weren’t capable of running off and hiding this early in the season like they did last year. Here are the full results from this past weekend’s football fun:

Trofense 0 – 2 Marítimo
Porto 2 – 0 V.Guimarães
Sporting 0 – 1 Leixões
Nacional 0 – 0 Rio Ave
P. Ferreira 2 – 1 Naval
Benfica 1 – 0 E. Amadora
Braga 1 – 0 V.Setúbal
Belenenses 1 – 0 Académica

Hero of the Week — Roberto Sousa, Leixões– Scored the match winner AT Sporting. In front of around 35,000 (subtracted out an approximate Leixões fan contingent) screaming Sportinguistas. Leixões’ first place dream lives on for another week.

Goats of the Week — Sporting — I’m completely boycotting my own blog until this team shows that they can fucking play. Horrific. The possession stat was at 70% Sporting – 30% Leixões at one point a fair way into this match. W.T.F?

Clean Sheets of the Week — Marcos (Marítimo), Helton (Porto), Beto (Leixões), Bracali (Nacional), Paiva (Rio Ave), Quim (Benfica), Eduardo (Braga), Júlio César (Belenenses).

And our tableau looks as so…

1. Leixões 19
2. Benfica 18
3. Marítimo 14
4. Porto 14
5. Nacional 14
6. Sporting 13
7. Braga 12
8. Naval 11
9. E. Amadora 11
10. V.Guimarães 9
11. Académica 9
12. V.Setúbal 7
13. Belenenses 7
14. Rio Ave 7
15. P. Ferreira 5
16. Trofense 4

You can basically book Trofense’s spot back down a league at this point. I don’t care how close they are to the others right now, they play atrocious football. The rest of the league is somewhat up for grabs still. The funny thing is that Leixões don’t run into a massive road block until Porto twelve matches from now, so they could conceivably hold on given the nature of the competition they’ll be facing. Couple that with the fact that they’re already out of any other competitions and they’ll have a well rested squad week in and week out. Yippee for a wide open league!

Category: Benfica, Porto, Sporting, Super Liga