We could have made a bigger deal about this Bayern-Manchester United match from last week, where Bayern essentially knocked the prominent English club out of Champions League title contention. Fortunately, somebody else did it for us. Some of the Lego re-enactments that are floating around the web right now are pretty lame, poorly conceived and hastily executed. But that’s because stop-motion animation, generally speaking, sucks. But this one is solid, and true to form. And honestly, I enjoy the Champions anthem so much, I’d probably link any video that had it. Enjoy it yourself after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Good people of America, it’s time to run to your pickup trucks. Grab your pitchforks and shotguns, and don’t forget your arguments about low scoring, players taking dives, and inconsistent officiating. The Super Bowl has been dethroned as the world’s most-watched sporting event.

The report has been compiled by Future Sports + Entertainment, an arm of leading international analysts Initiative, and details how the 2009 Champions’ League final between Manchester United and Barcelona was the most-watched sports event worldwide. It attracted 109m viewers in its entirety, and “reached” 206m people, who saw at least part of it live.

The Super Bowl, traditionally the biggest TV event in global club sport, attracted 106m live viewers for the whole thing, with a reach of 162m. –The Independent, via The Sports Economist.

European soccer has really grown on me over the last five years–hey, it beats the hell outta baseball–and since it’s kinda the world’s game anyway, I’m not terribly upset to hear that the Final (which I watched intently) enjoyed more total viewership than our most recent Super Bowl (which was on at some guy’s house I was getting crazy drunk and eating all of his celery.) Enjoy your little record, Europe, and try not to get it too dirty between now and Sunday, when we’ll be taking it back.

This has been around the web for a couple days now, but it’s rather awesome and it has nothing to do with Tiger Woods, so I feel compelled to post it here. It’s a goalie in soccer that wandered down to the other end of the field and headed in a pretty sweet goal. Why was he at the other end of the field? Let’s ask the blockquote:

Standard Liege were on the edge of European elimination in Wednesday’s Champions League game against AZ, but a late goal from goalkeeper Sinan Bolat helped the Belgians to a 1-1 draw, sending them into the Europa League in the process.

“I looked to the bench to get permission to go forward and they all nodded to allow me to leave my goal,” Bolat told Goal.com after the match.

Oh. So there you are. But that doesn’t explain the homoerotic interlude after the goal. Back in the day, those kinds of things weren’t guy. They were just grown men…celebrating their strength. As seen on Hot Clicks.

Real Madrid won’t have another match for two weeks, but that didn’t stop the Spanish Champions League club from opening its doors for a preview of their new acquisition, Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the greatest soccer player in the world. Real Madrid spent $131 million US for him, and I guess couldn’t wait to show him off to a capacity crowd at…wherever it is they play [checks index card] at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. In Madrid. Obviously.

Obviously, there’s dick-all going on in sports today, so here’s a pretty sweet goal from Brazil, via Sporting Blog, via Maj, via everyone that had this before we did. This guy could play for your club for a bit cheaper than nine figures, I’m sure.

As the athlete’s celebratory cry for the team achievement has long been, “I’m going to Disneyland,” the new exclamation for the more provocative sportsman might be, “I’m gonna blow a load into Paris Hilton.” Such seemed to be the plan for Christiano Ronaldo, who found himself in a California club called MyHouse Wednesday night before finding himself in the hotel heiress. I wonder which line to get in was longer. Wokka wokka wokka!

The scoring machine and Paris got down and dirty as they teamed up to celebrate the soccer ace’s £80million transfer.

A clubber who witnessed their frolicking said: “They were sucking each other’s faces off like their plane was going down.

“At one point Ronaldo had a bottle between his legs and Paris was stroking it. It was very racy.” |The Sun|

TMZ is “reporting” that Paris went back to her old fling the next night, who’s some guy I never heard of.

But our spies say last night Paris begged Doug Reinhardt to take her back. She told him she loved him and had made a mistake by breaking up with him.

We’re told she was texting him all night and then showed up at his house at 4 AM this morning, banging on his door.

See? With Paris Hilton, even the door gets herpes. Um, I mean laid.

Don’t think of this a soccer story so much as it’s a triumph of capitalism in the most pinko sport in the world. Spanish soccer juggernaut Real Madrid extended a €93 million bid (almost $131 million US, or 13.1 million bags of weed) to English team Manchester United for the services of Christiano Ronaldo (not pictured), considered the best player in the world by people that care about that sort of thing.

The remarkable bid comes just days after the Spanish giants signed Brazilian Kaka from AC Milan for a then-world record sum, maginally short of £57.5m [about $94m US]. Former United manager Tommy Doherty told Sky News the deal was good news for United, but a further indication “the game’s gone mad”. |Sky News|

After purchasing the rights of two of the most sought-after players in the world [a transfer is basically a trade for cash], some people are left wondering where Real Madrid will find the money.

Xavier Sala i Martin, Exectutive at Barcelona FC does not understand how Real Madrid and Florentino Perez, who have admitted to having huge debts recently, can suddenly gain access to the huge sums of cash they are now spending.

“I do not know where the €300 million that Florentino Perez thinks he has for signings actually comes from,” Sala i Martin told radio station, RAC1. “Florentino Perez says he will recover that money by selling shirts but, in order to do that, he will have to sell 30 million shirts. That is impossible.” |via News Bizarre|

I don’t know anything about soccer (that’s the game with the really skinny swords where they all wear white, isn’t it?) but $225 million is a lot of money to just buy the rights of two players. But hey, here we are on Thursday morning talking soccer. Which means we might be totally screwed for topics once the NBA and NHL playoffs are over.

|WAG img from Uncoached|