In the 2022/23 season, the Portuguese football league recorded the highest average of fouls and cards shown per game among the leagues occupying the top 10 of the UEFA rankings.
According to the statistics on each of the official websites of the leagues in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Scotland and Austria, no other league has reported as many fouls per match as the Portuguese league . .
In a total of 34 rounds and 306 games played, 8,681 fouls were recorded in the Portuguese I Liga – seventh in the UEFA hierarchy – that’s an average of 28.4 per game.
The second worst figure was for the Austrian championship, the last place in UEFA’s top 10, which recorded 27.5 fouls per game, totaling 5,339 fouls in 194 games, while the Belgian league comes in second with 25.2 fouls per game (7,696 in 306 games).
Conversely, the Netherlands (Eredivisie) averaged less than 20 offenses (19.8), followed by England (Premier League) with 21.1 and Germany (Bundesliga) with 22.6.
Also in terms of cards, Portugal was in the ‘tail’ of the top 10, with an average of 5.6 cards shown per game, between yellow and red. In the 306 games of the Portuguese championship, the referees showed a total of 1,606 yellow cards and 112 red cards.
La Liga (Spain), with 5.1 cards per game, and Serie A (Italy), with 4.6, seem to be just above the Portuguese championship, while the Eredivisie, as happened in terms of offenses, was the proof with the lowest average cards (three ), followed closely by Ligue 1 (France), with 3.3, and the Premier League, with 3.7.
In addition, Portugal had the highest average number of yellow cards (5.2) and the only reason they did not repeat the red card result was that Spain had a worse record on this score, with 0.4 to 0.36 in the Portuguese league.
Source: DN
