The Drubbing

For a sport whose U.S. detractors find it exaggerated, overly dramatic and slow, football (read: soccer) truly knows how to make these attributes work in their favor.  Even if they’re just drawing names out of a hat.

What makes this situation unique is that rather than a playoff situation in American sports where you can see your likely opponent coming for as much as a month out from the post-season, here you’re actually finding out along with the rest of the world as it unfolds in front of you. It’s akin to the NCAA Basketball Selection specials that precede The Tourney.  Here, the big wigs (Chelsea, Barcelona, Manchester United, Milan, etc.) sit with their contingent relatively unmoved by who shows up on their plate.  Whereas the flip side to this cool approach finds the clubs like Rubin Kazan visibly sweating and bug-eyed when their name gets called. “F@#$, we have Barca and Inter?!?!”

Without getting into the minutiae of how it all works, today UEFA held their Champions League Group Stage Draw in Monaco.  With as much pomp and circumstance as the NBA, NFL or NHL drafts, the random draw was made on live television for the first time here in the US.  (other than past satellite subscribers.)

There are some incredible match-ups in this year’s tournament. Next week I will make my predictions with regard to how it is all going to shake out. But before we get too far along here, just in case, here is a little history for any newbies:

Bar none, one of the most exciting tournaments on the planet is the UEFA Champions League.  The tournament pits the best clubs from all across Europe against one another to determine who proves most lethal come May 2010. The tournament is structured similar to the World Cup with qualifiers, a group stage and subsequent elimination rounds.  While many of the clubs in the competition gain automatic entry given their placement in their already strong domestic leagues, the remaining clubs such as APOEL, Besiktas and Maccabi Haifa (Who? Exactly.) must grind it out in qualifying matches for the group stages. After the preliminary rounds were completed yesterday, here’s how the groups will shake out:

The bottomline here, however, is that Tuesdays and Wednesdays over the next 9 months have now gifted you the perfect excuse to skip out on work at 2:45 and head to the local pub to grab a pint and soak it all in.  Guaranteed, by the end of your Champions League  experience, you’ll get goosebumps whenever you hear this song – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM3DihWqesU

Match Day One is 9/15 and 9/16 this year.