The Game Has Begun

The game has begun. This past week, the most prestigious football tournament in the whole world has begun. The UEFA Champions League. Now, since I know many or should I say most of you aren't THAT much into football I’ll try to explain it very easily so you can understand how this works. This is an annual tournament; it starts around mid-September and ends in May. Tournament, where only the best teams from all the European Leagues take part. There's never more than five teams from the same country , who gets in and who doesn’t is something very confusing that I'm not going to get into right now, let’s just say the best teams from each league get into it. Some of the Leagues these teams are from are; Spain, England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and many others, all from Europe, remember.

First, there's the group stage, the qualifying teams get put into one of the eight possible groups chosen randomly. In each group there are only four teams. After the groups have been defined, each team plays every other team on its group twice, once at home (their stadium), and once out (the other teams stadium). After every team has played all their respective games, then, it’s time for the Knockout Phase. The first and second place from every group goes on to the Knockout Phase, which starts with round of 16 first, then quarter finals, etc., etc. Hopefully we all know how it keeps going...right?

The teams I go for in general in football, not just in this tournament are; Real Madrid and Manchester United. I've been supporting these two teams since, well, I can remember. I support them in their own local leagues, Real Madrid, Liga BBVA (Spanish League) and Man. U, Premier League (English League), and in The Champions, place where they both play; I pretty much never miss a match of either one.

This week, again, they’ll be playing, Real Madrid vs Auxerre (France) and Man. U. vs Valencia (Spain), both seem to be very attractive matches, and hopefully we’ll win. I’ll let you know later how it worked out.