Champions league might be easier to pick up at this point than the domestic league. Its also every other week so commitment is low.Basically all the top teams from european leagues based on previous year’s results will play each other in group, round of 16, quarter finals, … etc until someone is declared the champions of europe. In the knockouts (currently), teams have to play one home game and one away game and the aggregate score will determine who progresses. If there is a tie, those with the most away goals win. Away goals do not count in extra time. A lot of folks get confused over this away goals rule but it’s probably what keeps CL so damn interesting.Quality of football is also top notch… its more competitive than WC IMO.
As for choosing your spirit animal… you’ll have to watch games to find your own. Luckily Manchester United and Chelsea are both out so you dodged a bullet there.
The timings of games sucks in the US, it’s 8.45pm in Europe so east coast US the games are on at 2.45 in the afternoon and all games are mid week apart from the final which is on June the 3rd.
So far into the semis there’s Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid with Juventus and Monaco most likely to join them although Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund still have a chance of getting through.
Real Madrid are the favourites having won it twice in the last 3 years, beating their city rivals in the final both times. Atletico will make you want to support them being an underdog but they’re also dirty feckers and love to feign injury, time-waste and all that stuff that southern europeans love doing when they play sports. Juve are a bit similar too.
Dortmund play the best football of all of them, really fluid attacking style which is a joy to watch. If you ever have a chance to go to Westfalenstadion it’s something every sports fan should do. That place makes Anfield sound like a Sunday league stadium.
Monaco are a real outside bet although they play some good football. My money is on Juve this year.
Real Madrid - Darling child of general Franco. Motto : buy the best players for the most obscene amounts. rinse repeat. the easy club - always winning but in the world anything can be bought if you have enough moolah.
Barcelona - play themselves of as the ‘peoples club’ and representative of the republic of catalunia but all success is built on qatari blood money, tax evasion and fraud.
Juventus - lots to respect, proper royalty but because italian too difficult to say what is actually theirs and what is just plain italian corruption
Monaco - fuck off, plastic cunts
Dortmund - peoples club, lots to love, standing ground, great atmosphere but very manufactured, very German. does not feel natural like some english clubs. guy on microphone eggs on crowd etc - like an american francshise. this is football not some commercialised crap.
Atletico - born in the shadow of real, the working class of madrid. looked down, mocked upon, made fun of until Diego Simeone returned. Like the prodigal son coming home, he moulded the team in his image, dirty nasty convining cunts who now take the game to the elites and no one wants to play them.
smashed their more illustrious cousins Real continuously in Spain but fallen short twice in Europe. This could be their year finally!!
Nice, can’t wait to start following it. I was briefly into soccer for about 4 years at my last job because my desk was situated between three first generation Europeans (German, Portuguese and England) but lost track of things when I moved jobs and had a kid.
Yeah, only bad thing is 2:45pm EST games. Luckily they changed the finals to Saturdays in recent years (doesn’t feel quite right to me still though).
You are now ready to join the legions of fans who sneakily check BBC.com for live updates and go to the washroom to check the score on their mobile phones.
Rooting for Dortmund this year. 3 away goals might be too much to ask though. I am assuming they will give up at least one.
So that was a quite impressive performance by Monaco, esp. in the first half: tight defense, efficient fast breaks and ball-proof. We´ll surely see interesting semis.
Watched both games last night and I agree that Monaco played really well, I can see them beating Real. Remember the Porto v Monaco final? That seems like decades ago now.
It was a defensive masterclass by Juventus but Messi had a shocker and Neymar lost his head a bit.
Agreed, Champions League is the best soccer in the world. Best teams playing fluid attacking football. WC/Euro is pretty boring because teams play too defensively and players play once every 2/4 years so it’s hard to get excited if your country isn’t involved.
I was wondering if that rule had changed recently as I don’t recall away goals not counting in extra time. Although I can’t remember the last time I watched a CL game that went to extra time. Incidentally 3 out of 4 Europa League quarters last night did, I bet that’s not happened before.
Mourinho’s Man Utd are really dreadful to watch bar Rashford. I hope Liverpool and City cling on for the top 4 this year.
A little off topic: last week, before the first leg of the CL quarter finals, the team bus of Dortmund was the victim of a bomb attack, with one player seriously injured (out for appr. 4 weeks). Yesterday a 28yo has been arrested as suspect, trying to influence Dortmund´s stock price and buying put options before the attack!
