OT: Champions League Final I Tottenham v Liverpool
2.5 hours (3est, TNT) away from the biggest sporting event in the world. Fitting in my eyes that the all English draw is being played in Madrid. Liverpool has more talent but that seemingly means nothing in this years tournament.
With all that said....
COME ON YOU SPURS
Hopefully there will be better goalkeeping this year.
Lloris is prone to some pretty bonehead decisions.
the biggest sporting event in the world?
It is. It dwarfs the Super Bowl annually, by a good margin at that. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, this is a game that usually includes teams from two different countries, with players with a wide array of nationalities. Liverpool has a massive Egyptian following because of their star Mo Salah, while Tottenham has a solid Korean fandom because of one of their players being of Korean.
The only reason anyone wouldn't think its the most popular is because of American Exceptionalism lmfao
i get soccer is bigger in total across the world, but unless there's been a huge displacing earthquake, tottenham and liverpool are in one country, a country that is a fraction of the population of ours. having a couple of out-of-country luminaries can't move the needle that much.
the super bowl is televised and radio broadcast to just about every country on the planet and has 100 million viewers in our country, alone, and hundreds of millions of viewers/listeners world wide. does this game here get that type of viewership? i guess it could, but please provide the proofs.
Worldwide the CL Final generally beats out the SB numbers. According to this article, as of 2015 the Super Bowl draws 140-160 million viewers worldwide, but the CL final gets over 180 million.
The World Cup final leaves all of those numbers in the dust, but it's once every four years.
Google ya lazy bum. Don't they have internet up there in the middle of nowhere Michigan?
"In addition to an impressive 200 countries tuning in, the teams in this year’s finals made off with $108 million in prize money, dwarfing the Super Bowl’s $14.9 million collected during the playoffs in January.
The UEFA Champions League last year drew a global audience of 380 million viewers, while Super Bowl XLIX had the attention of 114 million viewers, a record for US television. The Super Bowl has an international audience, but the numbers are too small to make a significant difference"
Not sure where vocativ gets its numbers from (the rest of the comparisons are pretty silly IMO) but the numbers I posted came from UEFA. Either way, it gets higher ratings.
Maybe avoid being a massive prick about it dude, I have no problem providing sources for it, he was wrong but being a turd stain doesnt help anything, especially if the goal is to convince people.
A lot of sarcasm in my post (hard to tell on internet obv), but I'm not going to go out of my way to be nice to someone who knowingly comes into a soccer thread screaming BS when we live in 2019 and have access to internet which can easily disprove said elitist American-centric views about the sport.
funny you posting about a lot of sarcasm in your post, but you and fatguy missed that mine was similar, then both of you went a little dramatic....
The UCL final is also broadcast on every country/radio, and the Super Bowl has always featured teams from one country, with one nationality for the most part.
In 2014 the UCL final between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid drew 385 million viewers, which would be the equivalent of the Chicago having the Cubs and White Sox in the world series based on size. And it tripled the super bowl in viewership that year. It's not even close. Soccer is so infinitely popular globally and will outdraw the super bowl forever
Further update: The CL number of "385 million" is not an apples-to-apples ratings number. UEFA itself professes an average audience of 165 million people for that particular final, with a "projected global unique reach" of 380 million, which is not the same thing.
The apples-to-apples discussion would appear to invoke the 165-180 million values that UEFA discusses verses the 100-140 million numbers discussed for the Super Bowl.
Cool, I'm not a viewing numbers guy, so this clarification helps a ton!
It's not even close to as big as the world cup final but it is bigger than the Super Bowl, regardless of the country where the two teams play. The game takes place in Spain. A large number of the players are international (so their respective countries are interested in how they do) and it's the championship of the sport that is the most popular sport in most countries.
All the reasons you gave for futbol being the most popular sport in the world also applies to Ice Hockey lulz
No it doesnt.
Hockey is played by only a handful of countries that mostly have tiny populations (scandinavia) and in no country is it even close to the most popular sport except Canada which has a population less than California.
In Finland hockey is the biggest sport. Soccer is pretty small time over there (I don’t know if they’ve ever made the World Cup or even the Euro) but they are a powerhouse on the ice.
Fair. Yes. In Finland, hockey might be the biggest sport. A country with population 5.5 million. Half the size of Michigan. Smaller than 22 states in the US.
Literally a speck of the global population.
This is an idiotic response, obviously. But Ice Hockey is nowhere near global. Basketball is the only sport that can touch soccer in terms of global reach.
edit.. too slow on the draw. tl/dr the Super Bowl is the CL Final's little brother.
I'm with #TeamXM !
XM is 100% correct on this. Not sure what the OP is talking about.
This is bigger than the super bowl but much smaller than the World Cup or the Olympics.
Maybe if the OP meant that this is the largest annual sporting event, that would be correct.
This is my worst nightmare as an Arsenal fan.
Tottenham winning would cap off a disastrous week.
Fuck Stan Kroenke.
I can’t wait until we do nothing this summer about the glaring weakness at right back. Kroenke is a terrible owner driving a proud club into the ground.
#YNWA
Mane gets 2. Salah gets 1.
Allison makes one impossible save and nearly blows another but Kane curls it wide.
Pool 3 1 Spurs
Good, now I don't have to watch it.
COYS
To dare is to do!
COYS
Pool should win by 2-3 goals
But Pool should have won the PL and Spurs should have lost to Ajax in the semis so .....
We're not gonna mention Pool being down 3-0 aggregate against Barca? lol
Anyone who saw Pool in the second half of the Barca game and thinks soccer is boring..I don't know I can't help them. They hit the switch on the high press and things get fun.
Yes, and we’ll also mention their dominating 4-0 performance the next time they played.
and this UCL title
I'm just glad we don't have to sit through Real again. The CL has become too top-heavy, but Tottenham and even Liverpool are kind of breaks from that.
I don't have a "team" in the EPL and I think it's silly for me to try to adopt one that can never be as big of a deal to me as teams I grew up watching and attending. But if I have a team I prefer, it's Man U... and I think it's hilarious that they are scuffling so badly as other megaclubs just increase their dominance. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather them get back to making deep CL runs and challenging for the EPL title again, but their failures to succeed in the current environment are spectacular.
Most Americans are bandwagon fans unless they're ex-pats. Nothing wrong in just picking a team from the various domestic leagues and following/watching them especially since a lot of them rarely play each other, except in UCL, so you can learn about the various histories of the leagues.
Friend of mine told me not to pick Liverpool bc they were the Detroit of England, without remembering im from Detroit. So YNWA
I find myself wondering why the hell I landed on Arsenal especially this year. I just remember being young with Arsenal and Juventus always being the teams I recognized, so I rolled with em as an adult.
Never liked ManU or AC Milan. Indifferent towards Barca and Real etc.
John Henry has done a tremendous job with Pool since he bought the club. I'm jealous. Truly.
I hopped in the year we sold Suarez, after they bottled the league. So I got stuck with a couple horrendous Rodgers years, and this year has been amazing. Last year was fun, but this year they beat some of the top clubs in the world and had the 3rd best finish in Premier League History. I'm so excited for this game
After the 2010 World Cup I decided to follow an English team. I wanted to pick one that has enough money to be interesting but not so much that I would feel guilty rooting for them, so that basically narrows it down to Arsenal, Spurs, and Liverpool. I went with Liverpool because the Pink Floyd (who are actually Arsenal fans) song "Fearless" has Liverpool fans singing YNWA at the end of it.
I have no real issue with people being bandwagon fans in these circumstances. A lot of people act like they are lifelong loyalists, though, and that chaps a bit. Lifelong loyalists remember mostly what it's like to die with the tragedies of their team from an early age. Think Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. The book climaxes with Arsenal finally, at least, winning the League title at Liverpool (an exciting finish only equaled by that bananas Man City goal for the title a few years ago). Prior to that it had been decades of misery.
We're Michigan fans, and we know what that's like.
I prefer Man U (and to a lesser extent Arsenal) in England, Barca in Spain, and Inter in Italy, but I don't die inside when they lose. I just don't. It would be false of me to pretend I did.
Yup I get exactly what you're saying which is why I'll always be the first to admit that I'm essentially a bandwagon fan (which is still better than what most Man City fans can say lol)
Rooting for Michigan and Arsenal or Livepool is the equivalent of 2 Michigans.
USC is kinda like Man U in that regard.
Man City is Clemson.
YNWA.
This has been one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had rooting for a sports team with Liverpool this year. Last year was fun, but they got some pretty fortunate draws. This year they've beaten PSG in group, Bayern, Barcelona and Porto.
Hopefully in a couple of hours were the champions of Europe again!
I’d love to see Klopp get one.
#KTBFFH
#LIB
My kinda sport, mates
It may be the biggest event in 2019 but it’s not in the same ballpark as the World Cup final.
Lets do that hockey.
Well, that escalated quickly
4-3 Liverpool. As a gunners fan I will watch this while rooting for the meteor.