Champions League Final today FC Bayern München vs. FC Chelsea (kick-off 20:45 CET stadium in Munich)
I'm not a big Bayern fan, so I'm just hoping for a good game. May the better team win.
Any guesses who's it gonna be?
I'm not much of a soccer/futbol fan so I'm not sure who to side with. A coworker who used to play professionally for a few different international teams was educating me on the situation a little bit yesterday. He said the Chelsea HC, who was previously an assistant, is currently the interim HC so I suppose I'll root for them. Although maybe it's a bad beat the old coach was fired since they made it to the final unless, of course, he was just wasting talent. So.... go Chelsea?
FC Chelsea win 
Hope the Russian mafia owner is disappointed tonight. At least Bayern is a true "club", owned by it's fans, not by a dodgy billionaire. Sorry, I mean hard working entrepreneur.
Chelsea and Bayern both dominated their national leagues through the past decade mostly through monetary power. Chelsea the English Premier League and Bayern the German Bundesliga. They both are certainly not underdogs. They both had a tough national season this year in their respective leagues for their standards. Bayern lost the league trophy and the national cup to BVB Borussia Dortmund... If they would loose, they would be empty handed.Chelsea only reached 6th position in the English top division. So both are not used to under-perform like that... measured by their standards. Both have devoted followers and devoted people that would like to see them loose. Chelsea has a bit the reputation to be a "bought club" through Russian business tycoon Roman Abramovich. The Bayern are known to be a bit condescending to their national competitors, which do not have the financial luxury to get the players they want. In football (as opposed to handegg ;-) ) there are no drafts like in most US sports, so money is all important to get the best players.
Ok, if that's true then I'm pulling my vote and giving it to the Bayern club 
I wouldn't agree that Chelsea have dominated over the past decade, although they have done very well with three championships and four times runners-up. Certainly they've had an indifferent season by their standards but they still managed to reach the Champions League final.
why doesnt Ma Long play Singles in the Olympic Games 2012?
oops, wrong sports. you guys are talking about football :p
And a good one you are getting indeed :)
Soccer = boring, couldn't care less who wins.
You clearly haven't seen the match... suspense to the very end.... overtime and penalty finish included. Congrats Chelsea...
Many Europeans consider American football and baseball boring... only basketball made an impact here.
There is nothing soccer could ever do to not be boring IMO, just bores the hell out of me, no matter what.
Football-The Beautiful Game-Is actually by far the most entertaining sport out there. I don't know what you could suggest as a better one?
The Premier League this season has been incredible with all the twists and turns and last minute goals and turnarounds etc.
The story of the Chelsea manager is a little more than just a promotion. Chelsea spent £15,000,000 in the summer to prize the current young manager from Porto, Andre Villas-Boas, for a 'long-term project' of rebuilding the team in a new mould of young exciting players while phasing out their successful 'old guard'. He brought Roberto Di Matteo in, a Chelsea playing legend, as his assistant. However after a poor Premier League campaign and a lot of very uninspiring performances in the Champions League with some questionable starting line-ups, the team was left looking very disjointed.
With Chelsea 3-1 down in the first leg of the quarter finals of the CL to Napoli, Andre Villas-Boas was controversially sacked, and Roberto Di Matteo was brought in on a temporary basis until the rest of the season.
After that however they have looked a different side, Roberto Di Matteo has brought back many of the older more experienced players into the first team to great effect and the team spirit and determination shown since then has been incredible.
Chelsea turned around their 3-1 deficit to Napoli with a 4-1 home win, before going on to miraculously beat Barcelona (widely regarded as not only the best team in Europe, but the best club side ever) at home before holding them to a 2-2 draw at the Nou Camp having had their captain sent off early on in the game, an incredible feat by anyone's standards.
This put them into the final against Bayern Munich tonight. The game has just finished after extra-time and penalties, the first 82 minutes weren't all that exciting. But the finish saw Chelsea, a team that had never won a penalty shoot-out in Europe and had never won the Champions League, against 4 time winners Bayen, who had never lost a penalty shoot-out in Europe with 5 penalty kicks to decide the Champions of the continent.
Chelsea won.
Umm, Hockey comes to mind, way faster, way more action and just as many twists and turns as that, plus they aren't a bunch of flopping pussies that fall at the smallest tap.
Ice Hockey was actually the other sport that came to my mind, it is certainly the speed of the game which is important imo. It just doesn't do it for me however. Yes, a case could be made that modern football is too full of diving etc, but it isn't so common in the lower leagues where matches are played a little more physically. Football however just seems a more 'full' game than Ice Hockey to me, with a much better history based on over a hundred years of rivalries etc between a lot of teams.
My favourite competition is actually the FA cup; a cup where teams of amateurs who play on sundays can earn the chance to play a world-renowned multi-million pound team with players whose weekly salary each exceeds the pay of their opponents' entire club's wages for the year, and have been known to win.
Makes sense, basketball is just about as boring as soccer.
I kind of disagree with you here... as a spectator sport basketball is probably the best there is. Fast paced... but slow enough that you can follow it at all times... something which can not be said about hockey... the object (ball,buck) is too small and fast sometimes. This comes from a player of one of the fastest sports on earth including a ball.
I do find the Hockey puck often a little too fast to follow and find Basketball often very predictable end to end stuff. I don't like games which get really high scoring as it means when a team does score it isn't so important.. In a Football game a goal is not expected on each attack and so when one is scored it is much more important/exciting.
Crowd involvement and atmosphere at a Football match; chanting/participation/size etc just seems better than in any other sport I can think of too.
Of course we are all biased at least a little by what we were brought up to care about and enjoy watching.
I'm just mildly disappointed that Ulster lost to Leinster in the Rugby Union European Cup Final today. Now, that is a man's game - it would be interesting to see how football (soccer) players would react to some of the perfectly legitimate (but brutal) tackles that go on there - rugby players get up and get on with it; football players roll around and whinge even if they aren't touched.
Marx got it wrong - sport is the opium of the masses.
I switched to rooting for Bayern but then I didn't really care. I just wanted to see some exciting play. This is probably the most I've watched a soccer match and it'll probably be enough for a while. However, it was definitely an exciting game for what it was.
One thing I like most about soccer is you can't be fat (e.g. American football) and there's no height restriction (e.g. basketball). What's difficult for me is the pace of the game. There's no suspense until they finally get a legitimate shot. Same with hockey. What I like about American football is the strategy and suspense due to the nature of how the plays are run. The NBA is just plain dumb. Basketball is a blast to play but professionally it's a joke. So each sport has its pro's and con's, imo.