Topic: Portuguese League - Liga Portugal 2022/23 - page 5. (Read 4609 times)

The Benfica team had a huge points lead against Porto. But due to losing two matches in a row, the point difference between Porto and Benfica is only four. This is not a big gap. The Porto team is in very good form right now. Their attack is very strong now. It can be assumed that they will win the next 5 matches. On the other hand, if Benfica drops points in two of the five matches, the title is likely to slip away. And so if they want to win the title, the Benfica team will have to perform well and win in their remaining 5 matches.

In today's game Arouca should win, and the team is well placed to play the conference league qualifier, as Famalicao is 6 points behind. Even more that Famalicao will have more difficult games than Arouca.

For the next games I believe in the victory of the top 4, so much so that I should start placing the bets again after that "strange" Benfica period, now it should be back to normal.
As Benfica's opponent is in 14th place in the table, it would be important to have an easy win to give morale to the group and not give too much hope to Porto's team, and more important is the fact that the next opponent of Benfica is Braga, probably a tough game and probably the most important for the title.

In this final phase, with 5 matches left, I am still surprised that 3 teams still have chances to be champions.

This is probably a safe bet to this round

Today starts day 30, where everyone is attentive to what Benfica and Porto will do. The fight for the title is well balanced at the moment and all points are important.

The matches for this round are as follows:
Rio Ave vs Arouca
Braga vs Portimonense
Marítimo vs Vitória Guimarães
Chaves vs Casa Pia AC
Vizela vs Paços Ferreira
Gil Vicente vs Benfica
Estoril vs Santa Clara
FC Porto vs Boavista
Sporting CP vs Famalicão

Benfica would still be the winners of the league. They lost two games in a row against Porto and against Chaves but I feel they have shaken off those defeat and are now on the winning path.  Braga and Sporting CP are among the final five games they have to play before the season ends and those are the only games that might be a problem for them. The other three teams they have to play are teams that wont necessarily be a problem to them.
It would be really painful for Benfica if they somehow lose out on the league title after having so much points ahead of the other teams this season.

It happens ,teams even at the top could end up losing and Arsenal had the same thing as well as we can see. However, I feel like Benfica definitely has a great chance to win it all, they do play like they are the best team in the league and that should not change. I personally feel like the best thing to do in this case to keep on betting at the top teams, not just Benfica but also porto as well because they may end up keep winning until the end of the season.

There will be moments when some of them may end up losing points but it will not be common so if you bet on braga, lisbon, benfica, porto games all individually until the end of the season, there is a possibility that you may end up seeing the teams do a lot better in the long run as well.

Benfica is in terrific shape this season because their losses are down more than they were the previous one. They exist to dominate Liga Portugal. Benfica has the potential to defeat its opponents in domestic league matches, which becomes the norm. The Eagles' remaining games wouldn't be challenging; their only potential concern would be against Sporting.  For the club, reaching the UCL semifinal would have been a dream come true, but Inter Milan's flames eliminated that possibility, they got another chance to retry again next season.

After the excellent campaign that Benfica had been doing in the championship, and having been 10 points ahead, few expected such an exciting end to the season. With only 5 games left for the end of the season, we have 3 teams capable of being champions: Benfica, Porto and Braga. It will be quite interesting how this final phase of the season will go.

Here is the league table, for a better view of the numbers:

Pos	Team	Played	Won	Draws	Lost	G.For	G.Against	G.Difference	Points
1	Benfica	29	24	2	3	69	17	52	74
2	Porto	29	22	4	3	62	19	43	70
3	Sporting Braga	29	22	2	5	62	24	38	68
4	Sporting CP	29	19	4	6	59	27	32	61
5	Arouca	29	13	9	7	33	33	0	48
6	Famalicão	29	13	3	13	33	37	-4	42
7	Vitória SC	29	12	5	12	27	35	-8	41
8	Vizela	29	11	6	12	32	30	2	39
9	Casa Pia	29	11	6	12	27	33	-6	39
10	Chaves	29	9	10	10	29	34	-5	37
11	Boavista	29	10	7	12	36	48	-12	37
12	Rio Ave	29	9	8	12	30	35	-5	35
13	Portimonense	29	10	3	16	22	35	-13	33
14	Gil Vicente	29	8	7	14	26	34	-8	31
15	Estoril	29	7	4	18	23	45	-22	25
16	Marítimo	29	6	4	19	26	54	-28	22
17	Paços de Ferreira	29	4	5	20	21	51	-30	17
18	Santa Clara	29	3	7	19	19	45	-26	16

Benfica made me doubt about them for once after losing two times in a row. Porto won both of the games in the meantime and got behind Benfica by only four points. However it looks like Benfica are back to a good form again by winning their most recent league game. There isn't much time left for the end of the season so the only thing they need to do is to keep this up until declaring the title officially.

This is a really successful season for Benfica despite the elimination by Inter in the Champions League. Winning the Liga Portugal title must be their priority and they have done great about this goal so far. There are still games against Braga and Sporting though but let's see how strong they will play.

Sporting Lisbon won away and made no mistake. In the first half lizbon pressed but couldn't find a goal. With only one shot on target in the first half, lizbon increased the pressure in the second half and did not lose points. Finding more scoring positions in the second half, lizbon found the goal at the beginning of the second half and managed to take a 1-0 lead. The second goal was scored in the last minutes.

the game happened yesterday and benfica won, but again benfica only managed to score 1 goal, betting on benfica is a big problem in the last games and especially when the league is at its end, I already commented many times that in the Portuguese league the things become very strange especially in the last league games, benfica was playing very well, they easily scored a lot of goals, but strangeness now that these are the last league matches benfica has not been able to score many goals, in the last 4 league matches Portuguese Benfica failed to score more than 1 goal, and we are talking about games against weak teams

but curiously this bad moment for benfica is greatly benefiting porto that now the points difference is at 4 points, and as i imagined porto will be champion that's because in the next games of benfica they are precisely against very strong opponents like braga who won benfica this season and then there is against sporting that is also an opponent that when playing against benfica wins or draws and knowing that benfica has difficulties in scoring and porto has 11 players plus the referees on the field so we can already see the champion porto , it is unlikely that Benfica will become champion

And the team really felt the pressure, but at least got the 3 points that is the most important at the moment, and in the next match should play a little more relaxed having 4 points of advantage.
Curious fact is that Otamendi is the one who guaranteed the victory, being that in the previous match he committed a huge mistake that made the team lose.


My doubt was huge and I decided not to bet on Benfica's victory with the match having more than 3 goals.
And I did the right thing, see how hard soccer is to predict, theoretically it would be a very easy match, but the nervousness factor is very big, the players felt the pressure.
The match only had 1 goal, the last Benfica vs Estoril match in the bwin league on November 6th ended with a 5-1 win for Benfica.

---

Next round I'll bet again on top 4 teams after these "hard to predict" matches, Benfica, Porto, Sporting and Braga should win their matches

Port and Benfica are still the biggest clubs with the greatest status and also with the most international successes. Sporting cannot intervene there, but Sporting has done well together with Benfica in Europe. based on those statistics, Porto falls a bit outside the boat. In the competition it is always these 3 teams that call the shots, other teams don't even come close to this trio. It would be nice if other teams would find the connection, but I'm afraid that won't happen. Certainly not in the short term, of course.

Porto managed to win yesterday in their away match.We can easily say that paços de ferreira, who were 10 men in the first half, could not be very effective in the second half. Porto increased the pressure, scored 2 goals, won the match and continued to follow Benfica.Today, Benfica beat their relegation rival 1-0 and managed to maintain the point difference with Porto.It should be noted that Benfica missed a penalty against Estoril. We could have seen a different score but it didn't happen.They might be a bit demoralized because they were eliminated by Inter.

I think Benfica will win and even with a lot of goals scored,the fact that they are now eliminated from the Champions League means that their full focus will be in Liga Portugal and they would want to ensure they win it as soon as possible.From what I remember every time they have played against Estoril they have won with at least some goals scored and I doubt we will see a different case this time.

In Italy it was because Inter let the guard down after going to 3-1 that they scored goals and equalized,they were not playing well and Inter saw that,the fact that Inter had won 0-2 in Portugal let them relaxed and they deserved the qualification.

I agree, Benfica is under a lot of pressure, considering that something similar has happened in the past and Benfica, despite the advantage it had, lost the championship. Some nervousness is starting to be felt, both from the team and even from the fans.

Estoril has always been a difficult opponent, but within reach of this Benfica. The fact that they managed a draw in Italy, despite having dropped out of the Champions League, may have given them extra motivation, because they saw that they are still capable of scoring goals.

If Benfica starts the game well and focused on winning, it has a good chance of doing so. We'll see.

I confess that it is surprising to see the table and until a few days ago I myself was saying that it was almost impossible for Benfica to lose the title, and now even Braga has chances to be champion.
Just 1 point ahead of Porto and 3 points ahead of Braga.
Of course they have one match less and victory must happen, I know, but it is a situation that puts a lot of pressure on Benfica today.



After the horrible sequence of games, with 3 defeats and 1 draw, today HAS to be Benfica's turning point to win the title.
Thinking that they still have difficult matches against Braga and Sporting, Benfica must think about the following: win all the other matches and in these two hard matches they can win one and lose one. That way Benfica will only depend on itself, no matter if Porto wins them all, because the advantage still allows.

I am wondering whether or not to bet on Benfica winning and the match having more than 3 goals, everything leads to believe that it will be so, but since there is the nervousness factor, I am in doubt.
The Guimaraes vs Sporting match might be a better one to bet on. And in this case I won't make any multiple, I'll see if Benfica returns to "normal" to return with the multiples that were working well.

Do you think Benfica wins easily or do you also share my opinion that nervousness can get in the way?

Yes the issue with the referee has been discussed as of late, but that is some fundamental problem which I think you can't solve within a couple of months. You need competitive salaries in order to prevent referees from being prone to bribery, but you also need top notch education like they have in the Premier League or in the Bundesliga. I don't know if that is a good indicator , but the last time a Portuguese referee took part in a World Cup was in 2014 in Brazil. The last two World Cup tournaments didn't have a single referee from Portugal. That's a bad statistic for them and reflects what has been discussed here.

Porto is putting pressure on Benfica now and they are also going to play against Braga and Sporting in the coming weeks. Now everyone knows why Roger Schmidt declined to take any early congratulations for this years Primeira Liga title. The race has gotten much closer than many of us thought a few weeks ago.

What we saw was a Porto with difficulty in the game, until they had help in the referee. With, a second yellow card to the Paços de Ferreira player, in a move in which he doesn't even touch the opponent. It's an imaginary penalty. This is one of the biggest problems in Portuguese football.
See the summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8ENpiA1atw

Watched Pacos de Ferreira - Porto game. Red card made life easier for Porto. 1st half was awful for them. I must mention monent that Pacos de Ferreira had, but Pepe made such sprint and stopped dangerous attack that it was difficult to accept fact that he is already 40 years old.
Benfica - Estoril, logically this game shouldn't cause problems for Benfica, but when you see how they're looking recently, it might be not that easy.

Tonight, matchday 29 of the championship began. In addition to this round, there are 5 rounds left for the end and the championship is red hot.
The first game was Casa Pia vs Braga, with Braga winning by 0-1, now waiting for what the rivals will do.

With emphasis on Paços de Ferreira vs Porto, where Paços de Ferreira usually complicates life for Porto, but this season has been out of shape. And we have Estoril vs Benfica, which is also usually a complicated game for Benfica, especially now that it comes from a series of bad results and needs to quickly recover so as not to lose the first place.

It will certainly be an exciting journey.

The remaining games are:
Famalicão vs Marítimo
Boavista vs Rio Ave
Portimonense vs Gil Vicente
Santa Clara vs Chaves
Arouca vs Vizela
Vitoria Guimarães vs Sporting CP