Paraguay. Small leagues present one central problem: how many games a team should play in a year. It is no good – from any angle – to have too few. 10-team league needs more games, so the Paraguayan championship was organized in 4 stages – in the first 3 every team played once against all others and in the 4th final stage the best 6 competed for the title. The best 6 teams played 32 games that way – a reasonable number. One team was relegated and one moved up from Second Division.
Sport Colombia (Asuncion) won the Second Division championship and was promoted.
First Division. Eventually, 4 teams were unable to reach the final stage – as most top division clubs hailed from Asuncion, the weaklings were mostly from the capital as well: Libertad, River Plate, and Atletico Colegiales.
Sportivo Luqueno was the 4th lowly team this year. Standing from left: Cristóbal Villa, Marcos Aquino, Gustavo Jara, Francisco Velloso, Edgar Morales, Cornelio Rolón.
Crouching: Nicolás Azuaga, Arísitdes Saldívar, Salvador Medina, Hugo Fernández, Cipriano Romero.
River Plate (Asuncion) was relegated – they were quite weak during the season, but hardly the worst performer, so the reason for relegation could be the popular in South America ‘relegation table’, taking into account not a single season, but 5 consecutive season. River Plate is not one of the successful Paraguayan clubs, so relegation was quite normal.
The top 6 played the final round-robin stage and positioned themselves as follows:
San Lorenzo (San Lorenzo) – 6th. They lost all final games.
Guarani (Asuncion) – 5th with 6 points. They scored most goals at this stage: 14. However… why were they 5th? Cerro Porteno got only 3 points at the final stage… Well, bonus points were carried over from the 3 earlier stages and Guarani had 0. Cerro Porteno, however, had 4 bonus points.
Cerro Porteno (Asuncion) ended 4th with 7 points. It was a very strange and uneven season – Cerro played very strong 2 stages and and was very weak in the other two. Ups and down – winning the 1st stage, then dropping down to 8th place in the second stage, winning the third stage, weak in the final stage. They were the team with most bonus points, but that was all.
Sol de America (Asuncion) – 3rd with 7 points. Their earlier stages were far from strong and they came to the final tournament with 1 bonus point. Standing from left: Marcelino Blanco, Elías Leguizamón, Eugenio Pereira, Vicente Fariña, Jorge Battaglia, Teresio Centurón.
Crouching: Julio C. Achucarro, Pedro Garay, Cristino Centurión, José Alfonso, Jorge Cartamán.
Nacional (Asuncion) took 2nd place with 8 points. 2 bonus points placed them above Sol de America and clinched them the 2nd Paraguayan spot in Copa Libertadores.
Little need to name the champion: Olimpia (Asuncion), of course. Judging from their performance in the earlier stages, it looked like it was not going to be their year – they did not win any stage. But were absolutely superior at the final stage: 4 wins and 1 tie. Even without bonus points they were on top. As it was, they had 2 bonus points – they were not on top gear in the earlier stages, but finished 2nd twice and once 3rd – it was just great timing, aimed at the most important final tournament. It was wise, vastly experienced squad, knowing perfectly how to get results – and it was also double-edged situation. The team was pretty much the same since 1977 or 1978, so the players were more than comfortable playing with each other, everything was smooth for a long time. But it was aging squad and that was dangerous – it was time to start rebuilding, but why changing successful team? The usual dilemma, perhaps aggravated by the Paraguayan predicament: small pool of talent. Good to refresh the squad, but with whom? Talented players preferred to play abroad and whoever was around was no match to aging, but still better than most regulars of Olimpia. This was a team winning 6 consecutive tittle, started in 1978 and losing only the 1984 championship. Only to bounce back on top in 1985. Why changing anything? Why changing the most successful squad in Paraguayan history, the one which bettered the old record of 5 consecutive titles, also hold by Olimpia? Just pile up trophies and there was difficulty counting them already.