Paraguay. Stretched out championship – the best teams played 40 games to decide the champion – but the rules were simple and clear.
CA Tembetary – or Atletico Tembetary, or just Tembetary – won the Second Division championship and got promoted.
The First Division was played in 4 stages, but always in the standard league format – the teams played once against the rest of the league in each stage. The top three teams in every stage got bonus points to carry to the final 8-team stage: the stage champion – 2.5 points, the second – 1.5 points, and the third – 0.5 point. The combined table of the initial three staged showed the top 8 going to the final stage and the last was relegated. This season Nacional (Asuncion) was the weakest and went down. Three other teams did not make the final stage: General Caballero, San Lorenzo, and
Guarani.
Stage by stage, there was really only one surprise:
Sol de America won the opening stage – they performed great: 6 wins, 4 ties, 1 lot game and 14-3 goal-difference. But they were last in the second stage with exactly reversed record: won just 1 match, tied 4, lost 6. 9-17 goal-difference. Then they back on top in third stage, ending 2nd only on worse goal-difference – won 7 games, tied 3, lost 1, 13-6. Weird ups and downs, but playing at the final stage was secured and with 4 bonus points at that.
Olimpia was different: they started sluggishly – 7th in the opening stage, but after that won the next two stages and went to the final stage with 5 bonus points.
Cerro Porteno did not won any stage, but had steady performance: 2nd in the opening stage, 3rd in second stage, 3rd in third stage. That gave them 2.5 bonus points.
Libertad got 1.5 bonus points for finishing 2nd in the second stage. But in the other two stages they mid-table team, finishing both times 6th.
Sportivo Luqueno was the last team getting bonus points – they were 3rd in the opening stage and got 0.5 point. Like Sol de America, they flopped in the second stage – 10th – but came back in the third stage finishing 4th.
The last 4 teams reached the final stage on combined points, but the title was pretty much out of their grasp because of the significant advantage bonus points gave the top clubs.
Colegiales ended last in the final stage with 4 points.
Sportivo Luqueno – 7th with 5.5 points.
River Plate – 6th with 7 points.
Sport Colombia – 5th with 7 points.
One should have expected Cerro Porteno to be playing for the title after such steady performance so far, but more likely they spent their efforts earlier – 4th with 9.5 points.
Libertad ended 3rd with 9.5 points.
Sol de America finished 2nd with 11 points. Great for a club hardly aver among the best, but… they were not a title contender at this point and if not for their bonus points would not been 2nd. They won only 1 match in the final stage. True, lost only once too, the rest was 5 ties. They scored the least goals at this stage – just 3 and finished with negative goal-difference 3-4. Interestingly, the best scorers at this stage were those having nothing to do with winning the title: Libertad, Cerro Porteno and Colegiales scored 11 goals each and River Plate – 10.
Well, familiar champion at the end – Olimpia (Asuncion). They were just unbeatable at the end: 4 wins, 3 ties, 9-3 goal-difference. Even without the bonus points the title was theirs. In any case, they deserved to win – started carefully, but after the first stage they were first all the way. Coming with 5 bonus points to the final stage helped demoralizing the opposition, of course, but can you blame a strong team for been strong? There was time a few years before that Olimpia seemed like making big mistake for keeping aging team, but now the rebuilding was pretty much over and danger was successfully avoided. Still… Almeida and Guasch appeared to be eternal. Anyway, one more title for Olimpia.