Supercomputer · Primeira Liga

Plays the rest of the season 10,000 times and shows how often each club wins.

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Portugal: a narrow title, a crowded bottom

Eighteen clubs, 34 matches, and one of the most concentrated title histories in Europe. Only two clubs outside Benfica, Porto and Sporting have ever been champions of Portugal, and the most recent of those was a quarter of a century ago. The title column therefore piles almost all of its probability onto three names.

That makes the other rows the interesting ones. The champion enters the Champions League league phase and the places behind feed the qualifying rounds of the three UEFA competitions. Relegation is two direct drops, 17th and 18th, plus a two-legged play-off in which 16th meets the third-placed side from Liga Portugal 2.

Primeira Liga projection: common questions

Which clubs have won the Portuguese league?

Benfica, Porto and Sporting have taken all but two titles in the competition's history. The only outsiders are Belenenses, champions in 1945/46, and Boavista in 2000/01. No other club has finished top of the Primeira Liga, which is why the projection so rarely spreads the title widely.

How many teams go down from the Primeira Liga?

Two automatically, the clubs finishing 17th and 18th. The side in 16th is not safe either: it plays a two-legged tie against the third-placed team in Liga Portugal 2 for the last remaining place in the following season, with the second leg staged at the top-flight club's ground.

Does the Portuguese champion go straight into the Champions League?

Yes. Winning the Primeira Liga means a place in the Champions League league phase without qualifying. The clubs immediately behind enter the Champions League, Europa League or Conference League qualifying rounds instead, so their European season starts in July and can end before August is out.

▸How does the supercomputer work?

Every remaining fixture is simulated with a Poisson model: each club gets an attack rating and a defence rating from the goals it has scored and conceded this season, and the expected goals of a match come from combining one side's attack with the other's defence, plus a moderate home advantage.

Before a ball is kicked the model does not start from zero: each club begins with a prior strength built from last season's finish and the market value of its squad, with the tails capped so no extreme is absurd. That starting point hands over weight to real results as they arrive, and by around matchday ten only the actual goals are talking.

The remaining season is played 10,000 times in a separate browser process, so the page never freezes. The title, top-four, top-six and relegation percentages are simply how often each outcome happened across those 10,000 seasons, and each club's points range covers the central 90% of its simulated finishes.

What the model does not know: injuries, transfers, sanctions, European fixtures or motivation. It uses goals and only goals — which is why it is in beta.