August reads like a metronome. The ninth, at home to Alverca: two-nil. The fifteenth, away at Rio Ave, the record's home-first line saying 0-2 — so two-nil to Porto on the road. The twenty-third, Arouca at home: two-nil again. Three afternoons, the same scoreline three times, six scored and none conceded, and not a single one of them that anybody would call dramatic.
Three identical scorelines is a rare and slightly comic thing. Any one of them alone is a routine professional afternoon; three in a row is a statement of method, the footballing equivalent of a locked door. Six goals, none conceded, and the only thing that changed between them was the address.
September loosened the tie slightly and then delivered the day the whole record had been waiting for. Two-one over Moreirense at home on the fourth. Four-one at Casa Pia on the twelfth — the line reading 1-4 with the home side first, which is the nicest way to read a score there is. And then Sunday the twentieth of September, 2026, at the Estádio Do Dragão, with Porto as the home side and Benfica across the halfway line: three-one.
That result deserves its own paragraph, because the file has been building to it for two years. Before Sunday, Porto had played Benfica four times in the record without beating them. The tenth of November, 2024, away at the Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica: four-one to the hosts, a 1-4 defeat. The sixth of April, 2025, back at the Estádio Do Dragão: the line read 1-4 again, which is to say a four-one defeat at home — one of the two heaviest afternoons in this whole record, and the only one of them at their own ground. The fifth of October, 2025, at the same ground: nil-nil. The eighth of March, 2026, away: two-two. Defeat, defeat, draw, draw — and then, on Sunday, three-one. Two goals from each side would have felt familiar. Three-one felt like the end of something.
Three-one in a derby is a comfortable margin that never quite feels comfortable — two goals in it by the end, but only after the afternoon has been lived through at full volume. It is the scoreline of a team that meant it.
Underneath all of that sits the league line in the numbers block below, and it is having an extraordinary quiet time. The clean part is a scoping note: that is a Liga Portugal line and nothing else. The older rows in this file show plenty of afternoons that went the other way, including those two Benfica defeats. What is new is not that Porto can lose — it is that none of the afternoons above has gone that way.
There is a shape worth naming in the winning stretch too. The margins have wobbled while the results have not: the clean sheets all sit in August, and the two September league lines before the derby are a two-one over Moreirense at home on the fourth and the 1-4 at Casa Pia on the twelfth. Both wins. Everything in the run above is a win.
Sunday at the Estádio Do Dragão is the afternoon two years of this record had been queuing up for. Whatever else September was, it was the month the Benfica line finally bent.
By the numbers — Liga Portugal: 1st · 7 played · 7–0–0 · 18–3 · 21 pts · form WWWWW (most recent last). All data from ScoreCrowd's match records, retrieved 24 September 2026.