Well, I apologize for the long break in posts. I have been busy and lazy, and never quite got in the habit of completely regular posts, but I shall try. I shall resume, with one regarding football!
Yes, the 2009-2010 UEFA Champions League has started, or rather the qualification matches have. For those unfamiliar with Champions League, it is the most important tournament for football (soccer) club teams (as opposed to national teams) in Europe, including the geographically non-European nations of Kazakhstan and Israel. It is a highly prestigious tournament, and as I shall cover in an additional coming post, highly important both in terms of the prestige it can bring to a club as well as the hard cash. Anyway, so far no club which has any serious chance of winning it has had to play, as clubs which play this early in qualification are (generally) not top clubs. For more information, please check it out here on Wikipedia (yes, it is accurate; I know this having further inspected the official site for the Champions League).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9310_UEFA_Champions_League_qualifying_phase_and_play-off_round
And here's a link for info on the tournament in general.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9310_UEFA_Champions_League
All in all, not too much to say regarding action to date in the CL (as I shall call it). No important matches so far, and few surprises, the only notable surprise being Estonian club Levadia defeating Poland's Wisla Krakow. Not entirely sure how they managed it, but...
One important thing I should tell you regarding the CL and the Europa League (another tournament for European clubs, although less prestigious and important than the CL; weaker clubs end up in the Europa League; an extensive post on them shall follow this one) is that many rounds are decided on aggregate. What this means is that teams are divided into pairs. Each pair plays two games, one at the stadium of each team (meaning each team has to play one home and one away game). Whichever club scores more goals total in those two games goes on to the next round. If they score an equal number of goals, then it is decided by scores scored in away match.
To clarify that last bit. Let us say Club A plays Club B. The aggregate score (the total score after both games) is 3-3. But the game hosted by A ended up 1-1, and the game hosted by B ended up 2-2. Because A scored more goals on the road than B did, club A would advance.
Enough of the Champions League for now. A post on the Europa League is next (meaning in the next few hours) as is one on this summer's soccer trades.
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