Liga 1: Perú’s Most Important Football Tournament

The Campeonato Liga 1 Perú is the top flight of Peruvian football and the most important sporting tournament in the country. Founded all the way back in 1912, the 2023 season is the 107th edition of this historic league championship.

Football started to become popular in Perú in the late 1800s, when British traders introduced the game to South America. The first official football match in Perú took place in 1892, and the game quickly picked up more and more local fans.

The creation of several football clubs across the country led to the development of a structured competition. Liga 1 got under way in 1912 and was immediately recognised as the Liga de Perú. It originally featured eight teams, with Perú Cricket crowned champions at the end of a short inaugural season.

Liga 1 became professional in 1951 and, by 1966, it was a national league encompassing teams from right around the country.

The league continued to grow through the decades and there are now 19 equipos de la Liga 1 – from Alianza Atletico and Atletico Grau in the far north right down to FBC Melgar and Binacional in the deep south.

Liga 1 is sponsored by Betsson, which is committed to promoting the development and growth of Peruvian football.

“This reaffirms our dedication as a company towards the development of national football talents and contribute to the growth of local football,” said Ronni Hartvig, Betsson’s Chief Commercial Officer, earlier this year.

If you want to bet on Liga 1, Betsson is the perfect place to do so. There are also plenty of opportunities to bet on other sports via the Betsson platform.

Liga 1 Perú Fixtures

Like many other domestic leagues in South America, the programación de la Liga 1 is centred around a season of two halves.

In the Torneo Apertura, all 19 teams in the division play each other once. The same happens in the Torneo Clausura in the second half of the campaign. Across the Apertura and the Clausura, every team will play 36 games.

Points are counted in two ways. The first is in the tournament they were collected in – the Torneo Apertura or the Torneo Clausura.

For example, in 2022 Melgar finished top of the Apertura Liga 1 table after amassing 41 points. With 42 points to their name, Alianza Lima finished top of the Clausura Liga 1 table. On account of finishing first in one of the two tournaments, these teams advanced to the play-offs.

The other way of counting points is through the cumulative Liga 1 table. Points obtained in both the Apertura and Clausura are included in this classification, which covers all 36 rounds of fixtures.

The cumulative tabla Campeonato Peruano has two main purposes. The first is that the top two sides will qualify for the play-offs, the winner of which becomes the national champion.

If a team finishes top of either the Apertura or the Clausura and also finishes in the top two of the cumulative table, they are given a bye in the play-off semi-finals and go straight through to the final.

The second is that the cumulative Liga 1 table determines which teams qualify for the South American competitions. The top four this season will go through to the Copa Libertadores, while the teams that finish between fifth and eighth will advance to the Copa Sudamericana.

Finally, the bottom two teams in the cumulative table are relegated to Liga 2. The third-bottom team contests a relegation play-off against a promotion hopeful from the second division.

You can check out the calendario de la Liga 1 for the 2023 season below.

Stage of Season	Dates	Matches Per Team
Torneo Apertura	3 February – 12 June	18
Torneo Clausura	26 June – October	18
Play-offs	November	2-4

As you will see from the table above, the exact dates for the Torneo Clausura and the play-offs have not been confirmed yet. For example, we are not yet sure when the play-off final, the última fecha Liga 1, will be – although we do know it will be some time in November.

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Best Teams in Liga 1

In the table below you will find the most successful sides in the history of Liga 1, dating back to the launch of the competition in 1912.

Team	Number of Titles	Most Recent Title
Universitario	26	2013
Alianza Lima	25	2022
Sporting Cristal	20	2020
Sport Boys	6	1984
Deportivo Municipal	4	1950
Universidad San Martin	3	2010

As the above information shows, fútbol Liga 1 has been dominated by the big three: Universitario, Alianza Lima and Sporting Cristal. Universitario are still the most successful club in the history of the Peruvian game, but they have not won a title for a decade.

Their golden era was in the 1960s, when they claimed the prize on five occasions. They were also the kings of Perú in the early 1990s, winning three titles in four years, and they were champions again in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

Alianza Lima are the defending champions following back-to-back triumphs in 2021 and 2022. Their first period of success was in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and they were champions three times in four years in the first part of the 1950s. Alianza Lima did not win a championship between 1979 and 1996, before finally ending their drought in 1997.

Sporting Cristal won their 20th title in 2020. Their first taste of glory came in 1956, much later than either Universitario or Alianza Lima. They have won 11 championships since 1990, making them the most successful team in Perú in the last 33 years.

Now let’s focus on the last three full seasons in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The table below shows who the top-performing teams have been during that period.

Team	Number of Titles	Total Points
Alianza Lima	2	159
Sporting Cristal	1	193
Universitario	0	168
Melgar	0	155
Universidad Cesar Vallejo	0	154

It is interesting to note that Sporting Cristal have by far the highest points tally over this three-year period, yet they won fewer titles than Alianza Lima. Sporting Cristal were more consistent but Alianza Lima handled the play-offs better.

Even Universitario collected more points than Alianza Lima, but they did not win a single title between 2020 and 2022.

Remarkably, Alianza Lima were almost relegated to Liga 2 in 2020. They were ultimately saved by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which handed Carlos Stein a two-point deduction which ultimately saved the club from the capital.

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Best Goal Scorers

Scoring goals is the most important part of football, which is why strikers usually attract the biggest transfer fees and generate the most headlines. Here are the leading goalscorers in the history of Liga 1.

Player	Years	Goals
Sergio Ibarra	1993 – 2014	274
Oswaldo Ramirez	1966 – 1982	190
Waldir Saenz	1991 – 2009	178
Jorge Soto	1990 – 2008	175
Teodoro Fernandez	1930 – 1953	172
Irven Avila	2008 – Present	161
Ysrael Zuniga	1999 – 2018	159
Emilio Salinas	1948 – 1972	159
Valeriano Lopez	1945 – 1960	157
Teofilo Cubillas	1966 – 1988	152

Sergio Ibarra is the leading goalscorer in Liga 1 history – and he has a substantial lead over second place. The Argentine spent the vast majority of his career in Perú, starting with Ciclista Lima when he was still a teenager.

Ibarra did not stay at any club for too long: in total, he represented 14 equipos de Liga 1. He was deadly in front of goal and ended up finding the net 274 times in Liga 1. Ibarra is nicknamed El Checho after the legendary Ukrainian centre-forward Andriy Shevchenko.

Next on the list is Oswaldo Ramirez, who found the back of the net 190 times during his Liga 1 career. He is best known for the five years he spent with Universitario, during which time he scored 80 goals and won two titles.

Ramirez also played for Sport Boys and Sporting Cristal across two spells. He fell just 10 goals short of 200 in Peru’s top division.

The top three is rounded off by Waldir Saenz, who notched 178 goals for Alianza Lima, Sporting Cristal, Melgar and Sport Boys.

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Best Players in the Liga 1

In the last few years, South American football has found it increasingly difficult to keep hold of its star players.

The very best footballers from the continent invariably ply their trade in Europe. Talented Peruvians are also attracted to Argentina, Brazil, the United States and Mexico. The national team squad selected to face South Korea and Japan in June contained 11 players contracted to Peruvian clubs and 13 based overseas.

There is still plenty of talent within Liga 1, though. Football is a team sport but footballers in the division often strive to win the Player of the Year award at the end of the season.

In 2022 the prestigious prize was won by Hernan Barcos, who scored 18 goals in 35 appearances for Alianza Lima. His contributions helped his club win the title.

Barcos was also the winner of the Player of the Year award in 2021. He scored 10 goals that season and was again instrumental in Alianza Lima’s title triumph.

In 2020, the winner of the award was Emanuel Herrera. The Sporting Cristal star scored 20 goals in 32 Liga 1 Betsson partidos for the team that won the title.

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Liga 1 Perú Champions

The champion of the Liga 1 season is not always the team that wins the most points. As we described earlier in this article, the Peruvian season is divided into two parts: the Torneo Apertura and the Torneo Clausura.

Finishing top of either tournament qualifies a team for the play-offs. They are joined there by the teams that finish in the top two of the cumulative table. If a side wins either the Torneo Apertura or the Torneo Clausura and finishes in the top two of the cumulative table, they go directly to the play-off final.

At most there can be four teams in the play-offs. This happens if the winners of the Torneo Apertura and the Torneo Clausura both finish outside the top two of the cumulative table. Sometimes there are three teams in the play-offs, and on occasion there are only two. Needless to say, the play-offs are los partidos de la Liga 1 that matter most.

Every play-off tie is held on a two-legged basis. The team that finished higher in the cumulative table is allowed to decide whether they play the home leg or away leg first. The winner of the play-offs is crowned Liga 1 champion, for which they receive a trophy, a set of medals and prize money.

For individual footballers, the Player of the Year award is the most prestigious in Liga 1. The award is voted for by Liga 1 coaches (35 percent), Liga 1 captains (35 percent), football journalists (20 percent) and fans on social media (10 percent). Other end-of-season awards include Best Goalkeeper, Best Newcomer, Best Young Player, Best Coach and Goal of the Year.