The Champions League Final Is Stupid and Unimportant

Whether or not your TV was tuned to it purposely, if you watched ESPN 2 last Sunday morning, you saw the most rabidly perfect finish to a sports season—sorry, Red Sox, you are horrible—in the history of sports seasons. In short: Man City had the title won, then they didn’t, then Joey Barton went on a Nietzsche-induced rampage, then Manchester United had the title, then Manchester United thought they actually won the title, and then Manchester City actually won the title—and this is not even mentioning the eight other games. The day ended with a good percentage of the world finding itself weirdly happy because a team that spent too-close-to a billion dollars on players won a championship. A championship that is now the de facto “playoffs are really dumb” argument.

Despite Sunday’s see-sawing soccer bonanza, and despite the fact that El Clasico already happened, The Biggest Game of the Year is still yet to be played—specifically, the UEFA Champions League Final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich on Saturday. The Champions League is a yearlong competition, played on weekdays alongside all of the domestic leagues that normally play on weekends, among the best teams from all the leagues in Europe. The current thinking goes: all of the best players play in Europe, so the Champions League—and especially the final—has eclipsed the World Cup in terms of quality and importance. Whether or not this is true, Fox will tell you it is more than once on Saturday.

So, the stated purpose of the Champions League—in addition to making a ton of money for all its participants—is to determine the best soccer team in Europe (aka the universe). In a terribly perfect world, this would be true. Fortunately, this world is totally imperfect, and the best team doesn’t always win and the Champions League is a small sample size and sports are sports. Which is why the sixth-best English team is playing the second-best team in Germany for the title of best team in Europe.

In today’s world-soccer climate, being the sixth-best team in England means having a manic-impulsive, billionaire Russian owner and a $50-million striker who you can bring off the bench. And being the second-best team in Germany means being Bayern freaking Munich, a team with four Champions League titles whose roster is basically the German National Team, only with two of the best, balding/scar-faced wingers in the world added in. Chelsea need to win the Champions League to qualify for next year’s competition (only the top four teams in England qualify, but Chelsea will take that fourth spot if they win on Saturday), and their interim manager, Robert Di Matteo, probably needs to win this game in order to hold on to the second-worst job in soccer. Bayern, a club with massively out-sized expectations at the start of the season, hasn’t won the Champions League since 2001, and by sheer stupid luck of the host-selection process they’re playing this game in their home stadium. And because of a dumb rule that suspends players for an accumulation of too many yellow cards—and for John Terry just continuing to be John Terry—there are a total of seven players suspended for this game, meaning both teams will look decidedly different from the squads that got them here. In short, outside of Bayern and Chelsea both having rosters of super-talented athletes who are really fucking good at playing soccer, there are a bunch of other weird/fun/interesting reasons to watch this game, too.

European soccer, like every sport, requires some purposeful ignorance. You can watch those EPL games from last Sunday and say, “Whoop-de-fucking-do! A team formerly backed by a human-rights violator and now backed by billions of dollars in oil money won the most soccer games!” Or you can watch this video and say, “That is god-damn great, even if I have no idea what the hell is going on.” Manchester City won their first English title in 44 years, which, by definition, is something different. On Saturday, two teams with a ton of money and a multiple-lineups-worth of great players will play, but since neither of those teams is Real Madrid or Barcelona, the winner will be a surprise to anyone who isn’t completely insane or a terrible liar. Chelsea and Bayern Munich aren’t the best teams in Europe, and maybe that’s unfair, but it’s about as refreshing as two billion- and almost-billion-dollar franchises playing for $11 million can be.

@rwohan