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Portuguese Liga

The Portuguese Liga (), currently named Liga Sagres after its main sponsor, is the top tier in Portuguese club football. Its current champion is Futebol Clube do Porto. It also has a European ranking of 10th by UEFA. The Liga is presently contested by 16 clubs each season, but only five of them have won the title. Currently in its 76th edition (counting four provisional championships in the 1930s) the competition is dominated by the nick-named " Big Three"; ( Sport Lisboa e Benfica, Futebol Clube do Porto, and Sporting Clube de Portugal), who have a total of 73 titles, with Clube de Futebol Os Belenenses and Boavista Futebol Clube winning the other two.

History

Before the Portuguese football reform of 1938, an experimental competition on a round-basis was already being held — the Primeira Liga (Premier League) and the winners of that competition were named "League champions". Despite that, a Portuguese Championship in a knock-out cup format was the most popular and defined the "Portuguese champion". " is always present in the equipment of the Portuguese champion.]] Then, with the reform, a round-robin basis competition was implemented as the most important of the calendar and began defining the Portuguese champion. From 1938–2000, the name Campeonato Nacional da Primeira Divisão (National Championship of the First Division), or just Primeira Divisão (First Division), was used. When the Portuguese League for Professional Football took control of the two nationwide leagues in 1999, it was renamed Campeonato Nacional da Primeira Liga (Premier League National Championship), or simply Primeira Liga (Premier League).

Sponsored names

Galp Energia acquired the naming rights to the league in 2002, titling the division SuperLiga Galp Energia. A four year deal with the Austrian sports betting web portal bwin was announced on 18 August 2005 amid questioning by the other gambling authorities in Portugal (the Santa Casa da Misericórdia and the Portuguese Casinos Association), who claimed to hold the exclusive rights to legal gambling games in Portuguese national territory. After holding the name Liga betandwin.com for the 2005–06 season http://www.lpfp.pt/default.aspx?SqlPage=content_noticias&CpContentId=286631, the name was changed to BWINLIGA in July 2006.http://www.lpfp.pt/default.aspx?SqlPage=content_noticias&CpContentId=286890 From the 2008–09 season, the league has been be named Liga Sagres due to sponsorship from Sagres beer.

Competition

From the 2006–07 season on, there are 16 clubs in the Portuguese Liga, down from 18 in the previous seasons. During the course of a season, each club plays all teams twice — once at their home stadium and once at their opponent's — for a total of 30 games. At the end of each season, the two lowest placed teams are relegated to the Liga de Honra, and the top two teams from Liga de Honra are promoted to the Portuguese Liga. For the 2008–09 season, the top two teams in the Portuguese Liga ( Porto and Sporting CP, first and second, respectively) qualified for the UEFA Champions League. The Champion (first place finish) goes directly into the group phase of the competition, with the runner-up (second place finish) entering the competition at the third qualifying round, and must survive a two-legged knockout tie in order to enter the group phase. The teams classified in third, fourth and fifth enter the UEFA Cup together with the winner of the Cup of Portugal. If the winner of the Cup of Portugal is already qualified for the Champions League, or would be qualified for the UEFA Cup by its league position, the runner-up will occupy the spot in the UEFA Cup. If the runner-up is also qualified for European competition through its league position, the spot is given to the sixth-placed team in the Liga. The sixth-placed team is allowed to play in the UEFA Intertoto Cup, but when it plays in the UEFA Cup because of the situation above, then the spot is taken by the seventh-placed team.

Current clubs in Portuguese Liga Sagres

Names in bold are the colloquial names of the clubs.

Television

Within Portugal, SportTV holds rights to broadcast both first and second division matches, through their Premium Channels, SportTV 1, SportTV 2, and in HD on SportTV HD. All clubs negotiate individually with the channel. One game a week is broadcasted on free television in a contract deal between SportTV and RTP. Internationally, Gol TV shows games throughout Latin America, Sportitalia shows one game a week and highlights in Italy for free, and in Brazil, games are broadcast by Band Sports. In the United States, ESPN360.com carries a featured game each week, SPT TV on Dish Network and ISA Sports broadcast all matches live on premium tier channels. In July 2009, ESPN announced that they will be screening up to two live games a week in the United Kingdom, replacing Setanta Sports as the TV broadcaster for the U.K. market.http://blog.taragana.com/sports/2009/07/28/espn-buys-live-rights-to-show-mls-and-other-european-league-games-in-britain-15545/

Official match ball

UEFA ranking

National League Ranking for the 2010–11 season of the European Cups. (Previous season rank in italics) (see UEFA coefficients full list for more information)

International honours by Liga players

Attendance

Since the beginning of the league, there are three clubs with an attendance much higher than the others: Benfica, Porto and Sporting CP. They have also the biggest stadiums in Portugal, with more than 50,000 seats. Other clubs, such as Vitória de Guimarães and Sporting de Braga, also have good attendances. Académica de Coimbra, Vitória de Setúbal, Belenenses, and Marítimo are historical clubs, from the biggest Portuguese cities, and have also many supporters. However, they do not have big attendances nowadays. Their stadiums have between 10,000 and 30,000 seats. The 2008–09 season saw an average attendance by club:http://www.lpfp.pt/futebol/pages/espectadores.aspx?epoca=20082009&info=Clube&competicao=Liga_sagres

List of champions and top scorers

Performance by club

Records

Other records

  • In 1972–73, Benfica won the Portuguese Liga without any defeat (28 wins and 2 ties) (96.7% efficiency).
  • In 2002–03, Porto won the Portuguese Liga with 86 points, the most ever obtained (84.3% efficiency).
  • In 2004–05, Benfica won the Portuguese Liga with just 65 points (63.7% efficiency). Historically, this efficiency would not have been enough for second place in any of the previous years.

Participating Clubs

Includes Campeonato da Liga. Years below refer to the season that ended that year.

See also

References

External links

"green air" © 2007 - Ingo Malchow, Webdesign Neustrelitz
This article based upon the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Liga, the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Further informations available on the list of authors and history: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portuguese_Liga&action=history
presented by: Ingo Malchow, Mirower Bogen 22, 17235 Neustrelitz, Germany