LISBON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Lisandro Lopez scored twice in Porto's 4-0 home win over Braga that extended their lead at the top of the Portuguese championship to 11 points after rivals Benfica were held to a 0-0 draw at home by Leixoes on Saturday.

The champions head the standings on 41 points from 16 matches, followed by Benfica on 30. Third-placed Sporting travel to Academica on Sunday with a chance to close the gap on Benfica to one point.

Porto went ahead after five minutes when Argentine striker Lopez tapped in a perfect cross from the right by in-form defender Jose Bosingwa.

http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=r...s&type=lgns

wow .very good

Porto have led from the beginning, has been the most one-sided championship for some time in Portugal...the writing was on the wall after 4-5 games

how did sporting do?

Crappy draw away to Académica which puts us 14 points behind Porto...Paulo Bento already threw in the towel by giving up on the title...

41 points from 16 games is astonishing form, even better than Inter's form - if only by .007 of a point per game.

Wasn't last years championship very close till the end? How come it's so 1 sided this year?

last season was a great race, it's hard to say what happened this year. Porto's attack is just so much superior to any other team's. Lisandro Lopes, Quaresma and Lucho Gonzalez are just a superb attacking trio for Porto. Defensively they're strong with Bruno alves getting better and Raul Meireles is quality in midfield.

Sporting have not really recovered from losing Nani, but aside from that, they've just slipped against silly teams.

kinda like last seasons serie a

Yeah, difference is everyone knew Inter would walk it before season kicked off. In Portugal, because of last season everyone was expecting a tighter race so it's a big shock it hasn't worked out like that but as Tobinho said, massive credit to Porto...think they only dropped their first points after around 8-10 games!

thats really good,