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The Libyan Premier League (Arabic: دوري الدرجة الأولى الليبي‎) is the highest division of Libyan football championship, organised by Libyan Football Federation. The players that play in this league are professional. The league's system has changed many times over the last few years, although as of the 2009–10 season, a simple round-robin has been operated.

The league operates a system of promotion and relegation with the Libyan Second Division. The league is currently sponsored by the Libyan telephone company Libyana, and so is officially known as the Libyana Premier League. Matches are usually played over a three or four day period, starting on Thursday and ending on Saturday or Sunday.

The league has been ranked by the IFFHS as the 56th best in the world for 2009, making it the 6th best ranked league in the Arab world, after the Saudi Professional League, the Egyptian Premier League, the Algerian Championnat National, Tunisian Ligue Professionnelle 1 & the Sudan Premier League.^[1]

The league's television rights are owned by Libya Sports, who show every single match. They also show a highlights program, called 90 Minutes, which broadcasts on Libya Sports every week.

The league is dominated by two clubs: Ittihad and Ahly Tripoli. 40 of the 41 titles have been won by clubs from the two biggest cities: Benghazi & Tripoli.

History

The Libyan Premier League was founded in 1963. Prior to that, there were three Provincial Championships, one each for the Eastern , Western and Southern provinces. The first league season at national level was the 1963-64 season, in which participated the Western Province champion Ahly Tripoli, the Eastern Province champion Ahly Benghazi and the Southern Province champion Hilal Sabha. After the withdrawal of Hilal Sabha due to lack of resources, the league was limited to just two teams. Ahly Tripoli defeated Al Ahly Benghazi 2-0 over two matches (1-0 home and away) to become the first Libyan Premier League champions.

The Competition

As of 2009–10, there will be 14 teams competing in the league. During the course of a season, from October to June, each club plays each of the other teams twice; once at home and once away, totaling 26 games for each team by the end of the season. Therefore, in Libyan football a true round-robin format is used. In the first half of the season, called the ذهاب - Dhahaab, each team plays exactly one time against each league opponent, for a total of 13 games. In the second half of the season, called the إياب - Iyaab, the teams play in exactly the same order that they did in the first half of the season, the only difference being that home and away situations are switched. Since the 1992–93 season, teams were awarded three points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a loss.

If two or more teams are tied for a particular position, the tie-breaker is as follows:

• I) Head-to-Head record between the team(s) in question:
  • i) Total number of goals scored in meetings between team(s) in question
  • ii) Total number of away goals scored in meetings between team(s) in question
• II) Goal difference
• III) Total number of goals scored
• IV) Play-off match at neutral venue.

African Qualification

Based on CAF's current 5 Year Ranking, only one representative will be proposed to compete in each of the CAF Confederation Cup and the CAF Champions League. These teams are the league champions and the domestic cup winners.

Due to Ittihad's success in the 2007 CAF Champions League, where they reached the Semi Final, the Libyan Premier League earned three points, meaning it could propose a further representative for each of the four following editions. In 2008, where Libya shared the 12th place ranking with Angola and Senegal, and was therefore allowed to propose a further representative to each competition. These two teams were Ahly Tripoli (runners-up), who qualified for the 2009 CAF Champions League and Ahly Benghazi (3rd place), who qualified for the 2009CAF Confederation Cup.

The provisional ranking for next year's CAF competitions means that one of the Libyan representatives (Ahly Benghazi, Ahly Tripoli, Ittihad or Tersanah) must earn two points to make sure the Libyan Premier League can provide three representatives for the 2010–11 CAF Competitions. They must at least reach the group stage of either competition to register any points.

Winners

Ittihad are the most successful Libyan club, having won 15 titles, including 4 straight titles (from 2004–05 to 2008–09. Their arch rivals Al Ahly Tripoli have won it 10 times, but have not won the title since the 1999–2000 season.

The last team to win the title from outside the capital was Olomby, who won the league in the 2003–04 season. The Big Two (Ahly Tripoli & Ittihad) have won 29 of the 42 titles that have been contested since 1964.

Champions by season

Performance by club

Titles by city

Top scorers by season

Regulations

The rules can be found on the official LFF website^[2]

References