With the Liga NOS at the exact midpoint of 2016/17, it’s time to assess how each of the perpetual title challengers have fared up to now.

PortuGOAL’s Benfica, Porto and Sporting experts give their verdict of how their respective team has done so far this season as well as their forecast about what awaits the Big Three in the remainder of the campaign.

In addition, our tactical guru Tiago Estêvão summarises the issues Rui Vitória, Nuno Espírito Santo and Jorge Jesus have faced this term.

The picturesque and mountainous Trás-os-Montes region – as the translation of its name ‘Beyond the Mountains’, suggests – has the feel of being cut off from the rest of Portugal. It is here, a few miles from the border with Spain, that the country’s most northern top-flight team is to be found.

Thus began an article focusing on Chaves and their then coach, Jorge Simão, in the December 2016 edition of World Soccer Magazine. The piece had been commissioned following the club’s impressive start to the campaign.

Last night, a late header from Carlos Ponck gave Chaves a Portuguese Cup quarter-final victory over troubled Sporting. It is a second scalp to fall at the Estadio Municipal Engenheiro Manuel Branco Teixeira, Porto having been knocked out on penalties at the same venue earlier in the competition.

If you happened to have your eye off the ball as the Liga NOS reached the halfway stage, Boavista ensured they’d set off all the relative alarms by storming to a 3-0 lead (yes, three!) in the first half of their clash versus Benfica at the Estádio da Luz.

The Eagles eventually levelled the score line, but a 3-3 draw did open an avenue for their rivals to cut the distance between themselves and the table toppers.

That would be a route 10-man Sporting would end up evading, as a wonder strike from Chaves winger Fábio Martins threw another draw into the works, this time concluding itself at 2-2.

The aforementioned slip-ups formed the idyllic scenario for FC Porto, who were able to dispatch Moreirense with a 3-0 win at home and cut Benfica’s lead at the top of the table back to four points.

Here’s this weekend’s tale.

A stoppage time header by Emiliano Valázquez gave Braga a somewhat fortuitous 1-0 victory at Marítimo last night to send the northerners into the final four of the Taça da Liga.

On Tuesday night a second-string Benfica outclassed Vitória de Guimarães, winning 2-0 thanks to a brace from Gonçalo Guedes in the first half.

Braga-Vitória Setúbal (25 January) and Benfica-Moreirense (26 January) is therefore the semi-final line-up, both games to be played at the Algarve Stadium, with the final on 29 January at the same venue.