Thursday Table Talk

We’re two matches into the season and the table is starting to take some sort of shape. I used to boycott putting the table in the weekly recaps because I was sick of seeing Porto at the top for the past three years.

However, now that I have my own Portuguese team blog with Sporting I guess I’ll have to transfer the bias over there and do my best to be somewhat objective. I can’t promise that I’ll be entirely unbiased, but neither can the anchors on FoxNews.

This isn’t going to be a weekly bit, as I’ll have the table at the bottom of the recaps going forward. I just figured I’d give you a quick peek at the clubs and what points they’ve gotten so far:

1 – Nacional – 6
2 – Sporting – 6
3 – V.Setúbal – 4
4 – V.Guimarães – 4
5 – Porto – 4
6 – E. Amadora – 3
7 – Braga – 3
8 – Naval – 3
9 – Leixões – 3
10 – Académica – 3
11 – Benfica – 2
12 – P. Ferreira – 1
13 – Belenenses – 1
14 – Rio Ave – 1
15 – Marítimo – 0
16 – Trofense – 0

I obviously don’t think Porto and Benfica will end up where they are presently. The two newly promoted teams are somewhat predictably in the bottom three and top o’ the table Nacional have gotten their six points on two wins over a couple of relatively cocka teams (Leixões and Naval). V.Setúbal have a bunch of promising young stars, led by Portuguese U(fill in the age) attacker Bruno Gama. They may surprise a few people and finish somewhere near the top three this year. Benfica are still a work in progress and could suffer a few more setbacks going forward. A year out of Europe completely isn’t entirely out of the question but I think Quique can right that ship eventually to salvage some sort of decent season.

The table from two matches into a season rarely looks like the table on the final day of the season. On the other hand, the games count just as much at the beginning as they do at the end, so a quick start never hurt anyone.

Category: Super Liga, UEFA Cup, World Cup