The return of European football

It's been great to have the return of the Champions and Europa leagues. Finally some real competitive football and what an opener with the Barca v Milan game which was the pick of the ties for me. Both sides will expect to go through but you'll feel advantage Milan with the draw at the Nou camp. Across the UCL, it must be dark days for Inter; they've lost their opening two games of the season and you must feel the new coach is feeling the heat (to think we thought Rafa had it bad). Well done Trabzonspor though, they only got "promoted" because of Fenerbache's match-fixing issues . This was definitely the result of the round and it'll be interesting to see if this was a one-off or not. Also Real, Chelsea, Bayern, Marseille and Porto quietly did their business and you'll expect these sides to navigate to the knockout rounds with the usual customers ManU, It's tough to call for the other groups and Man City, Arsenal, Lyon and Ajax are in groups that look juicy and makes it hard to call if they'll make it through.


After my last rant on shocking scorelines it's good to have fiercely contested matches and see that the Real's, Manchester's and Bayern's of this world don't always rack up "video-game" scores. Speaking of games has anyone sampled PES 2011 or FIFA11? 


The Europa is always a mixed bag for me; first there are so many matches I can't keep track of the scores or the highlights (the roundup is on later this week) but then on the flip side they're always goals galore which every footy fan just loves (I'm not a hypocrite, the scorelines ain't that crazy they're of the 4-1, 5-1 variety you know just good enough to appreciate and not bad enough to be headline grabbers). I'll start to pay attention when the knockout stages come along but for now I'll just look forward to the "goalazos"


The journey so far


My Sunday league team got an away win last week, your's truly duked it out for a hard fought 1-nil win. We probably had enough chances to score more but to be fair the other side could have nicked 1 back as well. I'm out this weekend so no Futsal or league games this Sunday for me. Wishing the lads all the best, strangely our first 3 games of the season are all away games if we can end up 1-1-1 that'll be decent.