I love the Champion's League because look at this ranking of global clubs – all the best clubs are in Europe, so the Champion's League is close to a World Cup of clubs.
All of the top 30 ranked clubs in the world are in countries that feed into the Champion's League. (Number 31 is Russian, which normally is in the Champion's League but was suspended from UEFA in Feb 2022 because of..... well I forget why)
All times are by https://time.is/Paris
Oct 3, 18:45
Union Berlin 🇩🇪 v 🇵🇹 Braga
Red Bull Salzburg 🇦🇹 v 🇪🇸 Real Sociedad
Oct 3, 21:00
Copenhagen 🇩🇰 v 🇩🇪 Bayern Munich
Manchester United 🏴 v 🇹🇷 Galatasaray
Lens 🇫🇷 v 🏴 Arsenal
PSV Eindhoven 🇳🇱 v 🇪🇸 Sevilla
Napoli 🇮🇹 v 🇪🇸 Real Madrid (WATCH THIS ONE)
Inter Milan 🇮🇹 v 🇵🇹 Benfica
Oct 4, 18:45
Hard to know which to watch: the first is better quality but less evenly matched, with Atlético favoured, whereas the second is harder to predict
Atlético Madrid 🇪🇸 v 🇳🇱 Feyenoord
Antwerp 🇧🇪 v 🇺🇦 Shakhtar Donetsk
Oct 4, 21:00
So much gold here. The list below is arranged from the most competitive to the most one-sided according to bookie's odds
Newcastle United 🏴 v 🇫🇷 Paris Saint-Germain
Borussia Dortmund 🇩🇪 v 🇮🇹 AC Milan
Celtic 🏴 v 🇮🇹 Lazio
Red Star Belgrade 🇷🇸 v 🇨🇭 Young Boys
Porto 🇵🇹 v 🇪🇸 Barcelona
RB Leipzig 🇩🇪 v 🏴 Manchester City
Union Berlin is a former East Berlin club owned by the fans, so you should root for them.
Benfica and Celtic are the other somewhat lefty teams in this.
Palestinian flags being waved in the Celtic stands
Benfica lefty? They were basically the state's team during the dictatorship (because they were the biggest team from the capital). The only thing is that Sporting were founded as more of a upper class team and Benfica as a worker's team, but that was more than 100 years ago and before the dictatorship.
I'm getting into the Union Berlin story.... they were in the 4th division just 17 years ago, only joined the Bundesliga for the first time in 2019, only joined the Champion's League this year, and then were within a minute of getting an away point out of Réal fucking Madrid in their Champion's League debut.
74,000 Union fans there acting like total party animals.
Goal-of-the-month stuff from that game: https://streamin.one/v/cba2c503 😗