2018 Categoría Primera A season
Highest scoring | Junior 4–3 Deportes Tolima (9 October) |
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← 2017 → |
The 2018 Categoría Primera A season (officially known as the 2018 Liga Águila season for sponsorship reasons) was the 71st season of Colombia's top-flight football league. The season began on 2 February and concluded on 16 December. Millonarios were the defending champions.
In the Torneo Apertura, Deportes Tolima won their second league title on 9 June, after tying with Atlético Nacional 2–2 on aggregate score in the finals and then beating them 4–2 on penalties[1] and in the Torneo Finalización, Junior won their eighth title on 16 December, following a 5–4 win against Independiente Medellín on aggregate score in the finals.[2]
Format
The league was played under the same format used since the 2015 season, with the exclusion of the regional derby matchday in the first stage of both the Apertura and Finalización tournaments being the only change to be applied for this season. Both tournaments were divided into three stages: a first stage which was contested on a single round-robin basis, with each team playing the other teams once for a total of 19 matches. The top eight teams after the nineteen rounds advanced to a knockout round, where they were drawn into four ties to be played on a home-and-away basis, with the four winners advancing to the semifinals and the winners of each semifinal advancing to the final of the tournament. The winners of the final in each tournament were declared as champions. Relegation to Categoría Primera B by average continued being used.[3]
Teams
20 teams took part, eighteen of them returning from last season plus Boyacá Chicó and Leones, who were promoted from the 2017 Primera B. Leones became the first team to secure promotion, after winning the Torneo Finalización on 26 November 2017, and competed in the Primera A for the first time ever.[4] On the other hand, Boyacá Chicó sealed their promotion on 6 December 2017, by winning the Primera B championship on penalty kicks against Leones.[5] They returned to the top tier after just one year. Both promoted teams replaced Cortuluá and Tigres who were relegated at the end of the last season.
Stadia and locations
![Aburrá Valley Metro Area teams: Atlético Nacional Envigado Independiente Medellín Leones Bogotá teams: La Equidad Millonarios Santa Fe](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/TransparentPlaceholder.png/8px-TransparentPlaceholder.png)
Atlético Nacional
Envigado
Independiente Medellín
Leones
Bogotá teams:
La Equidad
Millonarios
Santa Fe