Portugal Primeira Liga predictions and odds

To the average football fan, Primeira remains a surprisingly unfamiliar topic, especially compared to the likes of the Premier League or La Liga. Sure, we all know some excellent Portuguese players, but what about the national league that allowed for such players?

Betting Fellow provides the best Primeira Liga betting odds and predictions, but we can also help you get a deeper understanding of the ins and outs of the league going into the 2023/24 season. Strap in for a deep dive into the history, most important teams, and standout players of the highest level of Portuguese football.

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Portugal Primeira Liga Predictions

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Portugal Primeira Liga Results

Portugal Primeira League History and General Info

The competition as we know it today dates back to 1938. While an experimental, round-based competition called the Primera (or Premier) League existed before that, it served a different purpose. The title of national champions was instead decided by a knock-out tournament competition. This event is still around today as the Taça de Portugal and is Portugal’s biggest cup-style tournament, but the title of Champion is reserved for Primeira Liga winners. Importantly, any such titles won before 1938 no longer count as championships per the decision of the national football association.

Either way, a round-robin league-type competition was established with the reform. It was initially called the Campeonato Nacional da Primeira Divisão, or the National Championship of the First Division. This name was used until 1999. It initially consisted of only 8 teams, and teams from the administrative districts Porto, Coimbra, Lisboa and Setúbal were allowed. This quickly caused issues, though, and the league kept expanding over the years to include more districts and more teams.

Though it’s rarely seen in the same light as the “Big 5” of European national leagues, the reality is that it’s fairly close to them. It’s currently ranked sixth in UEFA’s national league ranking system. Interestingly, it once broke into the aforementioned Big 5 in the 2011-12 season by overtaking the French Ligue 1. Since then, however, France has risen to new prominence, so Primeira went back down to number 6. According to the International Federation of Football History & Statistics, though, its world ranking sits at an impressive 4th place. This ranking, however, takes into account all contributions and performances throughout the history of professional football leagues.

Speaking of history – most of Primeira’s is marked by the dominance of three major clubs – Benfica, Porto FC, and Sporting CP. These three took pretty much every championship title since the league’s founding, except for Belenenses in 1945–46 and Boavista in 2000–01. Benfica holds the record for most titles won in total with 37, followed by Porto’s 29 and Sporting’s 18. Generally, these three will also end up holding the top 3 positions in almost every season’s table. It’s worth noting that Sporting occasionally lags behind the former two.

As you might imagine, the rivalry between the fans and players of Portugal’s Big 3 can get quite heated. Their dominance, however, is a double-edged sword. The games between them often boast record-breaking attendance, but almost all other Portuguese teams suffer from it. As a result, Primeira Liga registers some of the worst attendance numbers among top-flight European national leagues.

Currently, the league consists of Portugals 18 best teams. The most recent change to this number was in 2015 when it was upped from 16. Besides that, Primeira Liga follows a fairly standard national league format. Over the course of a season, each team plays against every team twice – once at home and once away. Points are awarded in the usual 3/1/0 spread, and the team with the most points in total is named champion.

The bottom two teams are relegated to the Segunda Liga – the second tier of professional football in Portugal. Conversely, the two best-placed teams from Segunda Liga are promoted to the top flight.

The champions automatically directly enter the UEFA Champions League group stage. The runners-up instead go to the play-offs of the group stage. The third- and fourth-placed teams go to the Europa League along with the winners of the Cup of Portugal.

The all-time top goalscorer of the Primeira Liga is Fernando Peyroteo. He started playing for Sporting CP just 3 years after the league’s founding and ended up contributing 331 goals over 197 outings.

Primeira Liga Derby Matches

The fact that this competition is distinguished by the dominance of just 3 clubs has born some of the most heated derbies in European football.

O Clássico

We’ll start by getting the biggest showdown of Portuguese football out of the way – Porto vs. Benfica. Like a lot of rivalries of its kind, the O Clássico represents a wider rivalry between Portugal’s two biggest cities – Porto and Lisbon. Benfica are currently leading in terms of total wins with 83 to Porto’s 78, but recent trends have shown that Porto are on an upward swing.

Derby de Lisboa

The Lisbon derby is often regarded as the most important derby in the country because of its high viewership across the world. It’s certainly the biggest local derby – it’s between Sporting CP and Benfica, both of which are based in Lisbon. It dates back more than a century, all the way to 1907.

FC Porto–Sporting CP

Though this matchup is not nearly as notorious as the former two, it’s still an important showdown between two of the Big 3 clubs. Supposedly, this derby served as a forerunner to the Portuguese Cup.

Primeira Liga Best Stadiums

Estádio da Luz

Officially dubbed the Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica, Benfica’s home turf’s unofficial name is after the neighbourhood it was built on. It roughly translates to the Stadium of Light. The name is due to the proximity of the Church of Our Lady of Light, but it’s oddly fitting because of the focus on transparency and natural light in its construction. It can house almost 65,000 spectators.

Estádio do Dragão

Translating to the Dragon Stadium, this is Porto’s 50,000-seat home ground. It’s named after the symbol of both the city of Porto and the club itself – a dragon. It’s also characterised by a frame of 21,000 square meters of azulejos – a form of ceramic painting art found from the Iberian peninsula.

Estádio José Alvalade

Sporting’s home turf in Lisbon is the second-largest stadium in Portugal – though the difference in capacity to Porto’s is almost negligible. It was named after the founder of Sporting CP and is also noted for being acoustically designed to hold concerts.