As the so-called business end of the Portuguese season approaches it’s time to do some number crunching.
This week there were the same number of goals as the sum of the first six digits of Pi, while the number of red cards was double that of the Bank of England interest rate.
Sporting won by scoring the cube root of eight while their opponents Paços Ferreira managed to score only (280/28) – 10.
Liedson got the first, courtesy of a goal keeping blunder, meaning he has now scored the same number of goals this season as a cat has lives. Derlei added a second with the flesh surrounding his skull in a game that completed João Moutinho’s second century of appearances for the Lions.
Next up is Bayern Munich away, in which Sporting will need to score two goals less than they scored in the Champions League group stages if they are to have any chance of progressing.
Porto meanwhile travelled to Leixões, where they jammed x goals into the net, if x =14y – 66 and y = √25. Their hosts meanwhile could only put away the loneliest number of goals, meaning they continue to descend the rungs of the table at the speed of a slightly obese child in a sack going down a helter skelter on a hot day.
The all-round strength of Porto was shown as Lucho, Hulk, Meireles and Farias all registered, and I’d be willing to wager ten times their current Liga Sagres points tally in South African Rand on their triumphing over Atletico Madrid in the Champions League this week.
The bookies are offering 819/630 on them coming out victorious, which means I’ll be 6,704 Zimbabwean Dollars richer come Wednesday night if the Dragons roar loud enough. About 140 decibels should do it.
Benfica maintained their chase for the title by scoring double the number of Naval’s goals.
In an event about as rare as the aurora borealis, Aimar found the next after a trinity of minutes with a strike from a score of yards.
Katsouranis bagged the winner with a header on nine times his own shirt number plus one.
Elsewhere, Guimarães scored the magic number of goals, at least according to De La Soul, to leave Belenenses with the same number of points as their position in the table, both of which are the lowest in the league.
Estrela Amadora and Sporting Braga both scored the same number of goals as there are bars in a standard Twix. Jardel scored all of Amadora’s goals in front of a crowd that numbered the same as the years that passed between the birth of Christ and the end of Mongolia’s Chandra Hindu Dynasty.
Braga’s next game is in the capital of France on the day between Wednesday and Friday, when they’ll look to dollop goals all over Paris Saint Germain at approximately the same consistency as they did over Standard Liege in the previous round.
In what were mutually exclusive matches Rio Ave and Académica scored the goal equivalent of the number of points awarded for a draw.
Unluckily for Rio Ave their opponents, Marítimo, reciprocated in kind.
Académica met with more luck as their opponents, Trofense, amassed only 0.4 of a goal for an early foray in the second half.
However, Trofense failed to supplement their decimals with integers after a right-angle’s worth of minutes meaning their tally was rounded down to zero at full time.
And in the shock result of the weekend Setúbal pushed themselves close to averaging a point a game by beating Nacional.
Could they prove to be the owls of the season, only waking up as its night beckons. Their result against Nacional seems to suggest so, as it sounds remarkably like the end of this famous owl catchphrase. Too-wit…
Results
Rio Ave 1 -1 Marítimo; Sporting 2 – 0 Paços Ferreira; Académica 1 – 0 Trofense; Leixões1 – 4 Porto; Guimarães 3 -1 Belenenses; Estrela Amadora 2 – 2 Braga; Naval 1 – 2 Benfica; Setúbal 2 -0 Nacional
The top
Porto - 45
Benfica – 43
Sporting – 41
Braga – 36
Nacional - 35