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Or to hell with NFL

Seriously, I like NFL, but I love football (soccer) more And it all kicks off tomorrow, thus giving me an excuse to hang around the pub even more.

So, for the next 9 months, let this thread follow the Euro 2012 thread and be a realm of banter and discussion. There will be times due to a lack of fixtures that this thread will drift away, especially in January, but I'll be keeping an eye on things. Apart from D-USA and one or two others, I'm not sure how many other football fans there are, but even if I have to keep this thread going myself to spite people, I will! As usual, anybody from the USA who wants to get involved, but doesn't know what the hell soccer is all about, can adopt a team! v This is more fun than presidential elections!

Anyway, on with the good stuff.

Prediction to win the thing: I'll nail my colours to the mast and take the easy choice of saying that Barcelona will be champions Madrid will probably fall short, Chelsea won't be able to park the team bus again, and Bayern Munich will never win anything with Gomez as their main striker!

Anyway, enough of my yakking. Here are the groups and my choice fixtures for week one.

Group A
Din Zagreb
Dynamo Kiev
FC Porto
Paris SG

Group B
Arsenal
Montpellier
Olympiakos
Schalke 04

Group C
AC Milan
Anderlecht
Malaga
Zenit St Petersburg

Group D
Real Madrid
Ajax Amsterdam
Borussia Dortmund
Man City

Group E
Chelsea (Reigning Champions)
FC Nordsjaelland
Juventus
Shakhtar Donetsk

Group F
BATE Borisov
Bayern Munich
Lille
Valencia

Group G
Barcelona
Benfica
Celtic
Spartak Moscow

Group H
Braga
CFR Cluj-Napoca
Galatasaray
Man United

Choice fixtures:

Real Madrid Vs Man City

Dortmund Vs Ajax

Bayern Munich Vs Valencia

Celtic Vs Benfica (out of the previous 4 fixtures between these sides, the home team has always won 3-0. Spooky)

Man utd should be able to get out without too much of a problem

Celtic on the other hand just lost 2-1 to the team that was bottom of the SPL, the team in questions had gotten 2 points from their previous 5 games GO SAINTS

result from tonight

Justice for Madrid in getting that win, even if you do want to slap Ronaldo!! For all their money, Man City were very limited. They won't win the CL with Mancini in charge. Maybe a manager swop is on the cards? Good game to watch though.