The Champions league is the most well known and recognised european club football competition in World football. It begins in July before the start of the season usually in qualifying rounds with clubs from various countries in Europe contesting to make it into the group stages.16 teams who are succesful in the qualifying stages join 16 seeded teams in the group stage, in which there are eight groups with four teams in each. The eight group winners and eight runners-up enter the final knockout phase, which ends with the final match in May.
In the group stages each team plays the other -1 match at home and 1 away. The top two teams in each group go through to the knockout stages. In the knockout stages there is a home and away leg. The team with the most goals over the two legs goes through . If teams are equal on goals scored then away goals come in to play. If a team has more away goals then the other team, then they will go through. Only if the scores are exactly the same from the home and away leg will a tie go to extra time . For example if it is 0-0 in 1st leg and 0-0 in 2nd leg or 1-1 and 1-1 etc.
My personal experience of watching the Champions league is that it is a great competition. It has all of the top teams from Europe in it with the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea , Manchester United,Liverpool , Inter and Ac Milan, Bayern Munich amongst other top names. It provides football of the highest quality with the top names. I have had a very low point though with the final last year, being a Chelsea fan it was a heartbreaking to lose like we did but it was the first time the team had made it to the final so the achievement of getting there was big in itself.
The first live champions leaguegame I attended wasn't until this season when Chelsea Played Roma at Stamford Bridge in the group stages. It's actually great the whole atmosphere before the game, with the champions league theme playing, the logo in the centre circle, Chelsea also gave us free scarfs. The atmosphere in evening games in the champions league are said to be the best by many fans I have spoken to. This is probably in no small part due to how higly the competition is thought of by football fans worldwide and also due to the fact that most of the top European teams contest the competition each season.
Some at Fifa are saying that in recent seasons the success of the English teams has almost devalued the competition somewhat. I disagree and say that it just shows how great the English Premier league is!
Summary: A top football competition
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