Soccer may not be the same if you don’t have a rooting interest. After all, screaming love for your favorite side and hatred for your rivals is what being a supporter is all about.
For a segment of the soccer public in the United States, they are mainly neutral fans that enjoy the beautiful game. If that’s you, then congratulations because the 2015-16 version of the UEFA Champions League has got to be your cup of tea.
The beautiful game can get no better on the club level than what we’ve all been witness to in the last matchday-and-a-half.
Who doesn’t like a good upset? Better yet when the team being upset has a villain for an owner or only is there because of the billions pumped in to the team by some oil tycoon.
Over the last few weeks we’ve seen upset after upset and masterful individual effort after individual effort. Suarez, Messi, Neymar, Lewandowski and Sanchez gave great performances to name a few individuals.
More importantly, teams from Belarus, Croatia, Russia, Portugal and even Greece got results in the firs two weeks of action.
Take this Tuesday’s Arsenal vs. Olympiacos matchday 2 clash for a perfect example. The Greek side came to the Emirates without much hope of winning. Heck, scoring in England was a hill to hard to climb for the club.
What happened? Scoring the opening goal and the answering back to every Arsenal volley back at them to lead to a 3-2 victory on the road. Yep, it isn’t Olympiacos on the bottom of Group F, instead it is the mighty English side.
Tune in to Fox Sports 2 and you saw Bayer Leverkusen go toe-to-toe with the dangerous and epically stacked Barcelona side. Leverkusen actually got on the board first and nearly held on before an epic final 10 minutes comeback gave Barcá the 2-1 win in Leverkusen.
It was easily the most entertaining match of the day with Neymar, Suarez and even substitute Munir El Haddadi got in on the action. The latter assisting on both of the Barcá goals. Arguably, Leverkusen could’ve had the lead and points out of this match had Javier Hernandez been anywhere near in form.
Then there was BATE Borisov, you know that side, right? Oh wait, you didn’t? You will after it took down Italian side AS Roma in a 3-2 thriller.
Even Bayern Munich’s 5-0 dismantling of Dinamo Zagreb was highly entertaining thanks to the Polish wonder, Robert Lewandowski. After scoring five goals in a span of 9 minutes on the weekend, he added a hat-trick to the mix on Tuesday night.
Who (outside of Chelsea supporters) wasn’t intrigued by and loving of Chelsea’s 2-1 defeat at the hands of manager Jose Mourinho’s former side FC Porto?
On a day when the minnows swam up stream and bit the big fish it was all a reminder that taking a step back from your rooting interests and actually taking in what has been the craziest and most fun group stage in Champions League history is worth while.
There’s just one question left to answer — Are you not entertained?
