Benfica hold second by a single point over Sporting

One point. That is the entire distance between SL Benfica in second and Sporting CP in third in the Primeira Liga table, and it is the kind of margin that makes every round of fixtures feel heavier than it should.

SL Benfica have 19 points from 8 games: 6 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat, with 24 scored and 7 conceded for a goal difference of 17. Sporting CP are unbeaten, 5 wins and 3 draws from the same 8 matches, but their 18 points leave them chasing by the smallest possible gap.

The difference sits in the goals. SL Benfica have scored 24, Sporting CP have scored 20. Four goals, one league position.

At the top, the picture is less kind to both. Porto lead on 24 points with a goal difference of +16, five clear of SL Benfica and six of Sporting CP. The title race, if it is one, currently runs through a team neither of these two has caught.

Below them the squeeze is tighter still. Santa Clara sit fourth on 18 points, level with Sporting CP, with a goal difference of +8. Arouca and Acad. Viseu follow on 14 each. Drop a point and you lose two places.

The individual numbers tell their own story. Vangelis Pavlidis of SL Benfica leads the scoring with 8, one ahead of Luis Suárez of Sporting CP on 7. Gianluca Prestianni, also of SL Benfica, has 5, level with Georgios Koutsias of Famalicão and Barbero of Arouca.

Form is where the two rivals diverge. SL Benfica have won W of their last five in the sequence W-W-W-L-W, the defeat among them a reminder that this squad is not untouchable. Sporting CP have drawn two of their last five, W-W-D-D-W, and have not lost at all.

Can an unbeaten team be the one under pressure? When the team above you has a better goal difference and the team below you is level on points, yes.

The Primeira Liga returns on Monday 19 October, when Braga host Gil Vicente. By then the gap will have been defended or erased.