Wonder Boy

 Simon B

Pour la version francaise de cet article, cliquez sur les trois barres en haut a gauche et choisissez "francais"!

    I'm a month into writing on this blog almost every day and I haven't mentioned the world's most popular sport. About the time I write about soccer. I am half French so I support and follow European soccer as best as I can. Sometimes it's difficult with the time zones or trying to be able to watch but I make do.

How it Goes Down

    I get that most people in North America may not fully understand the way soccer works in Europe (not how to play but the leagues and formats). So let me just give those who may need one, a quick overview of how it works

    Each country has its own League which is called "domestic leagues" (For example Spain - La Liga). Each country has 2 leagues, a first and a second league. The first league is the better one. At the end of the season, the top four of the second domestic league get promoted to the first and the bottom 4 of the first get relegated to the second. In those leagues, teams compete to finish top of the standings at the end of the season.

    Apart from the domestic leagues, there are European competitions that usually oppose the top team for each domestic league. Depending on the league it's either 4 or 6 teams that can compete in the European tournaments.

The top 2 teams compete in the "UEFA Champions League" Which is the Stanley cup of European soccer. Then teams who finished third and fourth compete in the "Europa League" which is like the Champions League only it comes with less prestige.

    The Champions league works like most tournaments. There are groups and the top 2 of each group move on to the elimination round (best of 2). The team with the most goals at the end of the 2 games moves on. Only the final is a one-and-done type of game.

    Paris Saint-Germain (France's premier club) has dominated its domestic league for the past decade but until last year, they were never able to do well in the Champions League. They were facing Barcelona FC on Tuesday afternoon in the first of the two games in the round of 16.

Historic Scars

    The last time these two teams met in a round of 16 in this tournament in 2017, PSG won the first game 4-0 but then blew it all losing the second 6-1. That made it 6-5 in total giving PSG the most embarrassing loss in the history of the tournament.

New Team

    Since 2017, PSG has gotten miles better. They signed one of the world's best players in Neymar Jr. and have gone on a tear of turning relatively unknown names into bug stars in Europe. They also brought in a young french kid by the name of Kylian Mbappe.

    If you've never heard of him before, you definitely will in the next couple of years. He's a world cup champion, 4-time champion of France (once with Monaco in 2017 than 3 times with PSG) and he made the cover of EA's big soccer game FIFA 21.

The Wrap

    Already? Yep. PSG had a huge game and Mbappe had an even bigger one. I'm going to make a detailed analysis of the game for Friday so be sure to return for that.

       If you have any other sports topics you'd like to read about, let me know in the comments or send me a message in the "Contact me" section in the sidebar!

    Thanks for reading! I'd love your comments and questions.

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