Premier League champions averaged 89 points; 4th place averaged 70

Champions of the Premier League, England's top football division, averaged 89 points over 21 complete seasons. Champions of the Brasileirão, the name Brazilians give their national league, averaged 77 over 19. In the final stretch of a season, two questions come back. How many points are enough to win the title? And how many to finish in the top four?

To answer, this guide uses 118 complete seasons of 6 leagues: the Brasileirão and the top divisions of England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France. In each league, every team plays every other, and the champion, the team that finishes first, has the most points: 3 for a win, 1 for a draw and none for a loss. In a 38-game season, the maximum is 114 points.

In the Brasileirão, 14 teams reached 75 points or more. Of those, 13 were champions. Only Palmeiras, a São Paulo club, missed the title in 2025, finishing 2nd with 76 points. The "magic number" of 75, quoted by Goal Brasil, a sports website, is not even required: 6 titles were won with fewer points. The fourth-placed team averaged 70 points in the Premier League and 64 in the Brasileirão.

How the calculation was made: 118 complete seasons of 6 leagues

Only complete seasons count, with every match recorded in the Soccer Addicted archive, the database of matches the site keeps. The final table of each season, the list of teams in order of points, was worked out from the archive's scores on 19 October 2026. The count runs from the 2004/05 season, which starts in 2004 and ends in 2005, to 2025/26.

The count uses the official table, with points deductions, the points a federation takes away from a club. The points of the top five matched the RSSSF's, an archive of tables, in 117 of the 118. The difference is Italy's Serie A in 2005/06: on the pitch, Juventus finished on 91 points, but the federation gave the title to Inter, with 76, after the match-fixing scandal known as Calciopoli.

The count leaves out the 2023/24 season, of which the archive holds about half, the 2019/20 Ligue 1 season, which ended early, and the 2016 Brasileirão and 2025/26 Ligue 1, each missing one match. The Brasileirão counts from 2006, when it was cut to 20 clubs. Seasons still under way stay out, which is why the guide shows no current table.

The champion averaged from 77 to 90 points, depending on the league

The champion's average ran from 77 points in the Brasileirão to 90 in LaLiga, Spain's top division. The Premier League and Serie A came in at 89 and 88. The table covers the six leagues (the country in brackets), the champion's average and the champions with the fewest and the most points. The points are raw, with no adjustment for the number of games.

The Brasileirão sat at the bottom of the list: it had the lowest average, 77, and the champion with the fewest points of the six leagues, Flamengo in 2009, with 67. The table shows the gap but does not prove the cause.

For a fair comparison, the calculation divides the points by the games played, which gives points per game, the measure used in the table below.

On that scale, the Brasileirão champion averaged 2.02 points per game. The champions of the other five leagues averaged from 2.25 to 2.37. The Bundesliga plays 34 games, not 38. So the German champion's average, which looks low, equals 89 over 38 games. The Brasileirão plays the same 38 games as the Premier League, LaLiga and Serie A, so the number of games does not explain the gap.

The magic number of 75: the champion reached it in 13 of the 19 seasons

The Brasileirão champion reached the magic number in 13 of the 19 seasons. Goal Brasil wrote in October 2024 that the Brasileirão champion has averaged 77 points since 2006 and that the "magic number" is 75. The archive's average, over a slightly different period, also comes to 77. In my reading, the magic number is a good starting point and a poor promise.

In 6 seasons, the champion finished with fewer than 75 points. The totals ran from 67, by Flamengo in 2009, to 72, by Corinthians in 2017. The same Flamengo won the title with 90 in 2019, the highest total in the series. The table below works like a ladder: for each points mark, it shows how many teams reached it and how many were champions.

The ladder shows the weight of 75 points and the limit of the magic number. Among the 14 teams with 75 points or more, the exception was Palmeiras in 2025. In the band of 70 points or more there are 33 teams. Of those, 18 were champions, and the other 15 finished in the top four without the title. The ladder counts what has already happened.

In Europe, each league has its own points mark for the title

In the Premier League, the mark is 85 points. The champion reached it in 18 of the 21 seasons. But only 18 of the 25 teams that reached it were champions. The other 7 finished 2nd. The strongest case came from Liverpool, who finished on 97 points in 2018/19 and lost the title to Manchester City, on 98.

In LaLiga, 16 teams reached 90 points or more. Of those, 10 were champions. The other 6 finished 2nd, all of them Real Madrid or Barcelona. In Serie A, 9 teams reached 90 points or more. Of those, 8 were champions. The exception was Napoli in 2017/18, who finished 2nd with 91.

For the Bundesliga, the table uses lower marks: all 9 teams with 80 points or more were champions. The league's site, bundesliga.com, wrote in 2019 that, in the league's entire history, every team that reached 79 points or more won the title. In Italy, Fanpage wrote in 2025 that a team under 85 points won the title only twice in the last ten seasons. The archive confirms both marks.

How many points to finish in the top four of the Brasileirão

Across the 19 seasons, no team with 66 points or more finished outside the top four. Brazilian fans call this group the G4. With 65, one did: Internacional, 5th in 2024. It is a fact about the series, not a rule. The Brasileirão's 4th-placed team averaged 64 points. The range runs from 58, by Fortaleza in 2021, to 69, by Corinthians in 2014.

The Copa Libertadores, South America's main club tournament, shows what is at stake. In November 2025, the CBF, which runs the Brasileirão, said that the top four went straight into the group stage, skipping the preliminary rounds. In 2024, the Brasileirão gave 8 places in the Copa Libertadores, 6 of them straight into the group stage.

The 4th-placed team in the six leagues

In Europe, the fourth-placed team averaged from 59 points in the Bundesliga to 70 in the Premier League. The cut-off mark in the table below runs from 64 to 78. Per game, the gap shrinks, from 1.74 to 1.84. Finishing 4th is not a fixed rule for qualification: what it is worth in the Champions League, Europe's main club tournament, has changed with the years and the country.

How to use these numbers with your own team's table

To use these numbers, find your team's points band and see how many of the teams in it were champions. The ladder counts end-of-season points, not those of a random matchweek. The ladder shows only the past. The champion's average is 77 in the Brasileirão and 89 in the Premier League. But Flamengo won the title with 67 in 2009 and 90 in 2019: the average hides that gap.