The División Profesional de laAsociación Paraguaya de Fútbol, also known as the Primera División , or due to sponsorship reasons Copa de Primera TIGO-Visión Banco, is the top-flight professional football league in Paraguay. Currently, there are 12 teams in the first division. The most successful club is Olimpia, with 44 championships. Olimpia are the most recent champions, having won the 2019 Clausura. IFFHS ranked the league as the ninth strongest in the world in 2012, and the eleventh strongest in the world in 2013. In 2017, the Primera División returned to 9th position in the world and the 4th from South America, after Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.
History
Liga Paraguaya's first game was played in 1906, after the director of the El Diario newspaper, Don Adolfo Riquelme, brought to his office on 18 June 1906, the representatives of the five existing football teams in Paraguay at that time to create the governing body of football in Paraguay: the Liga Paraguaya de Fútbol. The representatives were William Paats and Junio Godoy Ramón Caballero, Manuel Bella and Salvador Melián, Juan Escalada, César Urdapilleta, and Vicente Gadea. The Liga Paraguaya saw Club Guaraní as the first champion in 1906, after defeating Olimpia in the final. The Primera División was founded in 1906 with 5 teams, and turned professional in 1935 when 10 clubs broke away from the amateur leagues to form a professional league. Since 1996 the format of tournament was changed to Torneo Apertura and Clausura, but since 2008 each tournament is independent. Traditionally, the dominance of Olimpia and Cerro Porteño went mostly unchallenged for decades. All of this changed at the turn of the 21st century. Since then, Libertad has been the most dominant club, while Nacional and Guarani have also experienced success at the local level.
Format
The system of the tournaments is round-robin. 12 teams play two rounds of 11 dates either away or home games, in total 22 dates in each tournament. Each year tournaments are divided in two independents tournaments: the Torneo Apertura from February to July, and the Torneo Clausura from July to December. Relegation is based on an averaging system. At the end of each season, the two teams with the worst three-year averages are relegated, and the two best teams in the "División Intermedia" are promoted to Primera División.
International cup participation
Since 2012, Paraguay have seven slots in international cups. These seven slots will be filled by five teams. In the Copa Libertadores, the winner of the Apertura and Clausura tournaments qualify automatically. The third representative is the best placed non-champion from the cumulative table of both the Apertura and Clausura. In the Copa Sudamericana, the champion of the Apertura and Clausura tournaments qualify, with the 4th and 5th best placed teams from the Apertura and Clausura cumulatives.
Teams
The following are the teams in the first division in 2020:
