Day 2, Most Of Another Champions League Game

Howdy from Texas! In the first 24 hours the blog reached over 500 views from over 10 countries! I'd like to thank each and every one of you, that means a lot, as pathetic as that is. As for today, I watched Chelsea v. Benefica. Chelsea is a buddy of mines favorite team so I knew they were EPL...and that's it.

First of all, I would like to apologize. I know it will be disappointing to hear this early in the blog, but I only watched half the game. I had a huge presentation to get to, so I can't speak in as great of depth as I may have been able to and I'm sorry.

Yesterday I mentioned not really being incredibly entertained as the match was largely one sided in Barca's favor. To my joy it did not feel that way today. I quickly caught myself a little biased towards Chelsea, but even from a largely third party view this was an incredibly exciting match to watch. In my new observer opinion it seemed like it could go either way at any time, and I like a good competition in any sport. As I said before, I don't feel like I got to see Milan's full potential, so I won't compare either of these to them, but I'll give my view of how they stand next to Barca. Neither felt like watch as beautiful a craft as the players on Barca made the game seem, being masters of the craft and all. Go one notch below that and that's where I feel these teams belong. But I may be totally wrong on that, my impressment threshold is quite low at this stage.

Two details I noticed about this specific match. The game seemed to be what we would call in lacrosse as "chippy." Both teams were playing very physical and seemed to be trying very hard to get some rough and tumble time in. From my research there is no animosity among these teams though so maybe it's just a play style, I'll have to see if I see that style any more. Secondly, there seemed to be a lot of whiners out there today. In all the sports I watch players argue about iffy calls sometimes and complain about blatantly wrong calls, but today there were tons of calls that definitely were fouls and players would complain and whine for a ridiculously unnecessary amount of time. It seems a pansy thing to do, in my honest opinion.

No specific players stood out to me today. After reading up on the second half, it seems like that is when a lot of players came to life. As Benefica is a Portuguese team I don't think I will see much of them after this, if I'm correct. Which is a shame in that I did enjoy watching them, but there is definitely no shortage of teams to watch. I will have to keep an eye on Chelsea in the future, as I enjoyed them today as well.

I also learned about the aggregate playoff system today. I think it's a great idea, and it makes sense to me. It fits the game of soccer perfectly, though I don't think it could work for other sports. This caused me to look around a bit, and it does seem as if home field advantage plays a part in soccer just as it does most American sports.

It seems the majority of games fall right around the areas I usually have class, I will have to keep that in mind when registering for future semesters, I felt some chest pain today leaving the game. Thanks to Redditor sjk97 for all his help and advice today! Come back tomorrow, I'm going to be giving Bundesliga 2 a shot just for fun because it falls in my free time, so I will be watching either FC Union Berlin vs FC Erzgebirge Aue or Greuther Furth vs Energie Cottbus. Suggestions? Later I will be able to catch most of Hannover 96 vs Atletico Madrid. The post will be coming late at night because I will be watching my hometown of FC Dallas take on the NE Revolution in my first experience with MLS. I live 20 minutes from the stadium so maybe I will go see if anyone is scalping?? We will see!