FC Porto win 23 of 25 league matches when scoring first | OneFootball

When a team is strong defensively, starting games in front is halfway to success. Farioli’s FC Porto is a clear example of that, as in 25 league matches in which they scored first, they only failed twice to hold on to that lead until the final whistle.

The home match against Sporting and the trip to Luz are the exceptions that prove this trend, two games in which the dragons struck first but ended up conceding goals that cost them all three points. At the Dragão, against the lions, they conceded the equaliser in the very last play of the match, while at Luz they let a two-goal lead slip, with Leandro Barreiro scoring the leveller in the closing minutes of the clássico.

All told, in the 25 matches in which they took the lead, FC Porto won 23 and drew two, posting a success rate of 92 percent. According to a study by the ‘Win sports online’ website, a record bettered by only five teams across Europe’s seven major leagues. Real Madrid tops this ranking, with 22 wins in 23 matches in which they scored first, followed by Napoli and Lens (19 out of 20), Monaco (13 out of 14) and Barcelona (24 out of 26). Even so, the dragons, alongside Monaco, are among the teams that, after going ahead, have never suffered a comeback on the scoreboard, with any dropped points always resulting in draws rather than defeats.

It should also be noted that, according to the same study, there are 25 teams across Europe’s seven major leagues that have not lost a single match after scoring first, six of them from Portugal’s top division. Besides FC Porto, they are Sporting, Benfica, Braga, Alverca and Rio Ave.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.