Are you going through withdrawals? Do you have the shakes? Are you missing the wall-to-wall soccer yet? We’ve been spoiled for almost three weeks with daily, multiple World Cup games to distract us from mundane work and an allegedly slow time for our sports calendar. This is the first day after 19 in a row with high quality, high stakes soccer to entertain us. What are we going to do now?
Well, I have some good news. Are you ready? Hold on tight.
The college football season begins in 63 days. We’re getting close, people. I can hear the marching bands and smell the tailgates already.
But, if you demand more soccer, no worries, there is good news on that front as well. While the World Cup takes a break for a couple of days to gear up for its quarterfinal rounds, there still is plenty of the Beautiful Game going on to maintain your fix. And, I am not talking about the restart to the MLS season either, although there is that.
I am talking about the UEFA Champions League, which, believe it or not, actually began in earnest yesterday and continues today. UEFA just crowned Inter Milan the 2009-10 as the Champ a little more than a month ago, but the pursuit for a new titlist is already under way. Dont expect any big names to be on the board any time soon, however. The main players in this field like Inter, Man U, Barca and so forth dont begin their quest until Group Play. Their regular seasons last year earned them automatic spots in Group Play, which begins in the middle of September after the late-August draw. Twenty-two teams earned automatic spots in that stage, but the other 10 who will round out the field will be whittled down over the next eight weeks from a pool of 54 teams through a series of qualifying rounds. It may sound obscure, and most of these teams dont have any chance and hoisting the cup at Wembley Stadium next May, but the fact is over eight of the next nine weeks, there will be action all over Europe on Tuesdays and Wednesdays determining who those lucky final 10 teams to earn an invite into the group stage will be.
I can guarantee that most of you have not heard of the four teams going head to head the next two weeks in the first qualifying stage to round out the final two spots in the second qualifying round in July. Well, unless, for some reason you’re following the Maltese Club League somehow on your super-duper satellite dish. The first leg of matches between Santa Coloma and Birkirkara, the Andorra and Malta champs, and Tre Fiori and Rudar Pljevlja, the San Marino and Montenegro champs is this week, with the second leg taking place next week. Its the usual aggregate goal format with total away goals as the tiebreaker. Acutally, the festivities began yesterday, however a monsoon-like rain storm blew into the Andorra captial yesterday, eventually making the pitch unplayable and forcing a postponement. Birkirkara was actually up 3-0, and UEFA will either reschedule the game in the next day or two or just go ahead and award the Stripes a seemingly insurmountable 3-0 away win and just move on to next week’s second leg in Malta. I am sure UEFA will make the right call, arent you?
I know, not exactly thrilling action. Even the two eventual winners wont likely survive the next qualifying round. This is like the Champions Cup version of the Big South or MEAC quarterfinal games in college basketball. Technically, those games begin March Madness, are elimination games and will play a small part of maybe shaping the eventual NCAA field. But, in the end, who is watching? Neckbeards and degenerate gamblers need only apply.
Wait a sec, dont we at the JCB kind of resemble that description? Why yes we do, but even we dont even know where to begin with these rounds. We dont that much about soccer to begin with, and out correspondent in Malta has gone dark on us. We’ll be including a lot of soccer coverage in the next year to go along with our standard, intense college football and basketball fare. But, we’ll probably wait until the Champions League begins group play in September until we start diving in deep into this tournament.
That doesnt mean I wont be keeping an eye on it, and writing about interesting outcomes or matches if they develop. A quick look at the qualifying rounds beyond this first one reveals some possible intriguing stroylines. In the very next round, Rosenborg the Norwegian League Champ begins it quest, which is notable because one of the best players is midfielder Anthony Annan. Team USA fans might remember him from this past weekend as he played for Ghana in the Round of 16. It’s the second straight Norwegian team that he’s helped pace to the league title and into the Champions League qualifications. A year ago, he was part of the Stabaek club that topped the Norway league and won a qualification round before falling in Round 3 to Copenhagen.
The Dutch team Ajax enters this field in the third round, playing a first leg against an unknown-as-of-yet qualfier the last Tuesday in July. I dont care what the game is, I am tuning in to watch Luis Suarez, the star striker for Uruguay who is also the leading scorer for Ajax, play. He’s been on pretty much a goal a game pace for the last year or so, regardless of competition. Can he, and La Celeste mate Nicolas Loderio, help the Dutch second place team go deep into the tournament? Can he put the team on his back and sneak them into group play? Just how far can a bigtime scorer like Suarez drag his team against this stiff competition. The famous Celtic side from the Scottish Premier League also debuts in the third round, while some heavy names, like Tottenhem Hotspur from the EPL and Sevilla from La Liga, make their qualifcation debut in the fourth and final round before group play. Those legs take place in late August. So there will be some stuff worth following during their qualification games and we’ll bring them to you as they develop.
And, if you’re still hard up for soccer, there are 26 games tomorrow, all first legs in a two-leg turn, in the first round of qualifying for the 2010-11 Europa League Cup. It’s the soccer version of the NIT to the Champion’s League and pretty much every Thursday through the end of August games will be contested to fill the 32 spots in group play which begins in the fall. Like the NIT, its probably hard to muster up enthusiasm for this event, especially so early in the process. But, we do have eight teams who played into the Group Stage of last year’s Champion’s League, three of whom made it into the Knockout Rounds, including CSKA Moscow, who advanced as far as the quartefinals before losing to Inter Milan. There are actually some pretty big name who will be vying for spots in the Group Stage this summer including Liverpool, Manchester City, CSKA Moscow, Juventus, Olympiacos, and Galatasary all of whom enter this contest at differing points of qualification over the next two months. You know who else is in this field? Atletico Madrid, only the home club of Uruguay’s Diego Forlan, my official man crush of the World Cup. As defending champs, the Red and Whites advance automatically into Group Play (technically, these summer qualifying legs will fill up the other 31 spots), but I already cant wait to watch them play.
Man, it was easier to talk myself into exciting storylines for this event than the NIT? What the hell is going on with me? I am morphing into a European. I need some American Football, stat. Thankfully, I have some bowl games from a year ago on DVR to recalibrate my senses. As we get deeper into these two tournaments, however, expect the growing cadre of JCB soccer correspondents to fill you in on the goings-on.
