Porto make it 9 straight with win at Marítimo
A 2-1 victory on Saturday 10 October keeps Porto on 24 points from 8 games, +16 goal difference and 1st in the Primeira Liga.
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Porto won again. The 2-1 result at Marítimo on Saturday 10 October stretched the run to 9W, and there is still no draw and no defeat on the league record after 8 matches.
The table reads 8 wins, 0 draws, 0 losses. 20 goals scored, 4 conceded, a goal difference of +16 and 24 points. Nobody else in the Primeira Liga has that combination. SL Benfica sit second on 19 points with a goal difference of +17, five points back, and Sporting CP are third on 18.
What separates the leaders is not the attack. It is the gap between the two ends of the pitch. SL Benfica have actually posted a marginally better goal difference at +17, which tells you the title race is being decided by points rather than by margin. Porto keep winning the tight ones and the wide ones alike.
The away record deserves its own line: 11 wins, 1 draw, 2 defeats on the road. At home it is 12 wins, 2 draws, 0 losses. Both columns are clean.
Next comes Gil Vicente away on Saturday 24 October, matchday 9. A ninth league fixture, against a side with nothing to lose and everything to prove. The question is simple enough: who stops this?
Worth remembering how narrow the margins are elsewhere. Vangelis Pavlidis of SL Benfica leads the scoring charts with 8, ahead of Luis Suárez on 7 and a trio on 5. None of them plays for the leaders. Porto are doing this without a name at the top of that list, spreading the goals across 20 in 8 games.
The Primeira Liga returns on Monday 19 October. By then the picture may look different. For now, 1st place belongs to Porto, and it is not close.