Paraguay. The winner of the second level – the only promoted team was little known:
San Lorenzo. Good for them, going up.
The top level was the usual South American affair: 4 stages! Every stage brought bonus points to top teams, carried to the final tournament, in which 6 teams out of the 10 league members played for the title.
One team was relegated, although it is unclear on what exactly rule – Tembetary Atletico was the unfortunate club and quite rightly so: they were last in the 1st phase, 9th in the 2nd phase, and 4th in its group (the league was divided into 2 groups at this one) in the 3rd phase. That is, Tembetary was either last and next to last all the way.
It doesn’t matter much, but here are the winners of the stages – Olimpia won the 1st after final play-off against Guarani, won 6-3. Guarani won the 2nd stage without losing a match. Olimpia won the 3rd stage, which was seemingly the team with most points – otherwise a play-off should have been played. But if so, it is strange, because was 2nd in its group – after Libertad. All that brought bonus points and teams entered the final stage as follows: Olimpia – 4 points, Guarani – 3 points, Cerro Porteno and Libertad – 1 point, and Sol de America and Atletico Colegiales – 0 points. As it was, Asuncion affair.
Well, it was only Sportivo Luqueno representing the rest of Paraguay in the league, but it was not their year. Standing from left: Juan Ortiz, Pedro Sandoval Cabriza, Felipe Nery Peralta, Hugo Benitez Isasi, Cesar Zavala, Ubaldo Gonzalez
Crouching: Nicolas Azuaga, Adolfo Javier Vera Espinola, Milciades Morel, Aristides Saldivar, Roberto Gamarra.
The 6 finalists played once against each other – that was the formula in every stage – and the final table emerged.
Atletico Colegiales ended last with 2 points. Sol de America was 5th with 5 points.
Libertad ended 4th with 4th with 6 points (1 bonus),
Quite surprisingly, Olimpia was good only for 3rd place this year – 7 points, 4 of which were bonus. They played miserably at the most important stage.
Cerro Porteno was 2nd with 9 points. They were the best at the final stage, obviously finely tuned for the decisive tournament, but bonus points worked against them – they had only 1 and that was their undoing.
Guarani triumphed – they were stable the whole year, close to Olimpia, which gave them 3 extra points. If bonus points did not exist, Guarani would have been 2nd – but only a point behind Cerro Porteno. That is, they in the same fine form from start to end – not exactly best at every stage, but at least second, and the accumulation of points was well rewarded – 7 plus 3 made 10: Cerro Porteno had 9. To the foreign mind, Paraguayan football is pretty much Olmpia and Cerro Porteno, but it was never so – Guarani cannot be excluded. They were the first champions of Paraguay in 1906 and this was there 7th title. And more importantly, they ended the long dominance of Olimpia – after 6 years of white heat, Paraguay had different champion.