UEFA Champions League

Personally, soccer is the greatest sport on the planet. It’s also currently the most played sport in the world with over 300 million people playing it for a team. And many many more are also playing for fun. Think about this, the record for the most watched super bowl is 144.4 million people watching. That’s a lot. Now, we have the world cup final. Over 3.5 billion people were either watching listening or playing. (Russia 2018 world cup final France vs Croatia)

But the world cup happens every 4 years and that is countries. There is another competition that is called the Champions League. 32 of the best teams across Europe compete in one tournament. This year though, it was something else. Records were set here and there.

One of those records were set by a team named ‘AJAX’ from the Netherlands. No one thought they would have got to the Champions League semi-final but they did! They beat a team where one of the other team’s players was worth of all of AJAX’s team including the bench. The record that AJAX set was the first time ever a team has made it to the semi-finals after making it through 3 qualifying rounds. (Qualifying rounds are for teams outside of England, France, Germany and Spain)

The other really important record set this year is related to resilience. This year, there have been 7 comebacks. In Champions League you play two games and you play one home and away. It’s pretty complicated but to explain it easily, if you get more goals you go through and if it’s a tie then the team with more away goals goes through. (Away goals are goals you scored when you play away from home in the other game)

I think that this year’s Champions League can teach us all about resilience and how to believe. Believe you can do the impossible or believe in yourself and the people around you.