Champions League is like their equivalent to Major League Baseball -- it has the best teams from one region (MLB - North America, CL - Europe) from one sport (MLB - baseball, CL - soccer), all from different countries (MLB - USA, Canada, the south; CL - France, Italy, England, Spain, Germany, Russia, etc).
And now for my completely unbiased preview of upcoming Champions League play
Shit yeah, motherfucker
Anyways.
The games are played in pairs - one home and one away for each team. Winning both games guarantees advancing. If both games tie or end with one win/one loss, then goals are added up. The team with more goals advances. If that doesn't do the trick, then away goals count for more, and the team that scored more away advances. IF that doesn't declare a winner, then they play overtime or something in the last game.
Matchups are as follows:
Olympique Lyon vs Bordeuax
Bayern Munich vs Manchester United
Arsenal vs Barcelona
Internazionale Milan vs CSKA Moscow
Naturally, we all know Lyon is going to advance like a truck (a renault truck?) past oblivious Bordeaux. That's a given. What's not given, though, is why UEFA (the european soccer FIFA or whatever) decided to pit these two against eachother. Clearly UEFA is afraid of the dominance that is Ligue 1, and they are scared of France dominating the world of soccer, much like Zinedine Zidane dominated the belly of Marco Materazzi. By pairing these two teams against eachother, UEFA doesn't have to worry about 2 French teams being left in the semi-finals, and then 2 French teams facing off for the title. This way, they can nip it in the bud, deal with one at a time, divide and conquer.
I'm onto your games UEFA.
Bayern Munich vs Manchester United
This would be interesting if it were FC Shalke 04 vs Manchester City, but alas we're given these two teams instead. And it's not like they even have all their awesome players -- Ollie Khan, Lothar Matthaus, Christiano Ronaldo, George Best -- ALL GONE. All moved to the greener pastures of other, better, teams or retirement; or in the case of George Best, the green beneath him is simply his own vomit.
Arsenal vs Barcelona
Arsenal is an interesting story in that despite having the only undefeated team in the modern history of the English Premier League, they managed to remain completely irrelevant. This is also in addition to the fact that they are essentially London's team (yeah, I know London has like 20 teams, but only Chelsea recently actually plays dece). Yep. Irrelavent despite being from the capital city of the country who claims to have invented the sport (though to be fair, I think the English would claim invention of the potato if you gave them the chance). But alas I stray, point being, best player on that undefeated team is currently on Barcelona, who happen to be reigning Champions League Champions (sounds a bit redundent, hey I know, Europe isn't really known for refinement and culture). This best player (from Arsenal, he's probably not the best on Barcelona, at least not at this point in time) -- Thierry Henry, longtime legend of French soccer, who gloriously single handedly defeated Ireland to qualify France for the 2010 World Cup. Just saying.
Internazionale vs Moscow
The other team from Milan, the team that manages to not be more Evil than AC Milan (by holding scum like Marco Materazzi on the roster) faces down this years eastern europe cinderella story (fuck, I thought this was soccer, not basketball). Personally, I was looking forward to a Turkish team holding that title this year, or maybe even Olympiakos from Greece. Sparta Praha also would've been pretty dice, but they just haven't been the same since the fall of the Soviet Union. Anyways, of all the games, this is probably the one I am least likely to watch.
Predictions are for suckers and psychics (read:suckers)
-- Knuttel
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