Another week of Liga NOS, another week of Sporting unbeaten as the Lions extended their winning run by beating Tondela. Porto maintained their place in the race by defeating Paços, but Braga fell behind in drawing with an Ivo Vieira-inspired Famalicão.

Marítimo got a vital derby win over Nacional, while Belenenses SAD and Gil Vicente got important victories in the relegation battle.

One side who are improving of late is Benfica, trying to repair the damage from a disappointing season. A player who has reflected this recent development is winger-turned-defender Diogo Gonçalves. He is the PortuGOAL Figure of the Week after starring in their triumph over Boavista.

• Benfica
• Sporting,

Sporting were made to wait until the 81st minute to overcome a staunch Tondela side at the Estádio João Cardoso, winning 1-0 and adding further fuel to their Primeira Liga title charge.

The Lions looked short of inspiration away from home before Tiago Tomás, alert to a loose ball inside the box, dragged the visitors over the line with his eleventh hour finish.

FC Porto replied with a late show of their own, defeating Paços de Ferreira 2-0 at home with goals in the final 15 minutes of the game to keep the distance between them and the league leaders at ten points.

The Dragons’ victory also sees them distance themselves from fourth-placed Benfica, initially level on points with Sérgio Conceição’s men after their own 2-0 win at home to ten-man Boavista. On Monday night Braga dropped two points in a lively 2-2 draw at Famalicão. PortuGOAL rounds up all the top action. 

The tough relegation battle in the Portuguese Primeira Liga continues. It is fair to say half of the league is threatened with relegation to the Segunda Liga, with just 5 points separating the bottom nine clubs in the 18-team league. We take a statistical dive into last weekend’s games involving the endangered teams, and look ahead to the next round, which again contains some crunch matches.

The biggest leap forward in Round 22 was achieved by Boavista, who said goodbye to last place with a 3-0 win over Famalicão. Portimonense also managed to kick free of the drop zone with the 3-0 win over Tondela. We look at how the games of the relegation candidates went and analyse the matches based on the live trends and statistics from overlyzer.com. 

Round 22 of this Liga NOS season was stretched over a number of days, last night’s Minho derby between Braga and Vitória Guimarães drawing events to a close. The former came out on top to move back into second place above Porto, who had previously beaten Gil Vicente.

Sporting remained on top and unbeaten thanks to more late heroics from Sebastián Coates, while Benfica got a much needed win in a Lisbon derby victory over Belenenses SAD. Boavista and Portimonense were big winners from the lower half of the table.

One side that continues to impress is Paços de Ferreira, who were inspired by PortuGOAL Figure of the Week Luther Singh in getting back to winning ways over Nacional.