Champions League: Arsenal Win by Penalty

There's really nothing to write about today. The Bulls got their behinds handed to them in Orlando. They are more 99-2000 Bulls than 90-93 Bulls. I think we all know the answer to their story. They will somehow manage to get the 7th or 8th seed, increase optimism in city, and then get swept in 1st round. As Bill Simmons would say.. Ladies and Gentlemen your Chicago Bulls.

So, I decided to fill you in on one of the greatest sporting competitions in the world, the Champions League. Basically they take the best futbol clubs from all the European leagues. For instance, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United (from England's Premier LEague) are selected to play, along the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, A.C. Milan and Juventus (the best clubs from Spain and Italy). The put all these great teams into a round robin tournament and then have a playoff. As an added twist for the playoffs, the teams play a home and away game. So Arsenal beat Roma (from Italy) at home 1-0. They then traveled yesterday to Rome to play the away game. Roma won 1-0. But, in aggregate the real score was 1-1. So they played overtime and then finally penalty kicks to break the tie breaker (the photo above shows Arsenal going crazy after scoring the game wining penalty).

Anyway, the Champions League is truly brilliant because you not only have team pride on the line, but also some country pride on the line. Commentators often argue which country has the best league. For example, this year England's Premier League has 4 teams advancing to the quarterfinals.

I'd love to give some of you non-futbol people an example of what this compares to, but there is no true analogy. The best parallel might be if the top 4 teams from the NBA played in a different league with the top teams from Europe or Asia. Except, unlike the basketball, the "other" teams are on the same playing field (i.e. the Italian teams are just as good as the spanish, english, german or french teams).

So if your interested, check out the champions league games. They are typically on ESPN's family of networks. The next games will occur during the first and second week of April. And of course, go Gunners.