Familiar patterns are beginning to emerge amongst the dizzying heights of the Liga NOS table, with none of the traditional ‘Big Three’ succumbing to upsets for a third week running, and once again each of Benfica, Sporting and Porto’s main goal-getters adding to their tallies.
Benfica kicked proceedings off for the pack of title chasers on Friday night with the visit of Chaves to the Estádio da Luz, eventually overcome by the likes of Kostas Mitroglou in a hard-fought 3-1 victory.
Rivals Sporting were out for much of the same in their short journey to Estoril, as goals from Bryan Ruiz and Bas Dost reinforced their hold over third place.
FC Porto were tasked with overcoming their midweek European woes and cutting the gap between them and table-toppers Benfica back to one point in none other than the ‘Invicta Derby’, requiring just the one goal from the in-form Tiquinho Soares to skip past the Boavista hurdle. Here’s how things panned out for the Portuguese giants over the weekend.
PortuGOAL continues its series of in-depth analyses of Portugal’s lesser known teams by turning the spotlight on arguably this season’s greatest overachievers.
“We spent two and half months preparing for this game, but everything went out the window because of the sending off. Now we have to focus on domestic competition.”
After years of bringing in raw talents from South America, Porto have gone back to the drawing board on their transfer policy and are now nurturing plenty of homegrown starlets. Writing for Sportdec, Tom Kundert explains why they’ve made the switch, and how they are now seeing the results after a barren few years. 
Porto will attempt to take their excellent domestic form onto the European stage in midweek as they welcome Italian powerhouse Juventus to the Estádio do Dragão. 