THE CITIZEN ON MARS

Definitely it’s Europe’s answer to America’s Superbowl. This morning’s UEFA Champion’s League Final between England’s Liverpool and Italy side AC Milan is highly anticipated that with almost the whole world watching—from Bangkok to Buenos Aires—it could just become even bigger than the Superbowl and nearly the Olympics.

I was bookmarking this match in my mind for more than a week now but forgot entirely about it, my thought being filled with myriads of everyday concerns. Luckily for me, I tuned in to BBC this afternoon and got informed of the match in the best timing ever, as 40,000 Liverpool fans was seen trooping to Greece’s capital city Athens in bright red get-ups (the Liverpool color) and it was reported that a major problem was looming where all of those English fans can’t possibly enter the stadium where the game is to be played (probably tickets must have been sold out earlier in the week).

This situation had apparently caused massive ticket scalping where prices have allegedly gone up to as high as 3000 US Dollar per entrance. Now that’s superfluous. 150,000 Pesos for a ticket is certainly unheard of in this part of town. That just tells us how important this sporting event had become since its inception 52 years ago.

So I’ll be up until dawn tonight, errr, I mean this morning (it’s about 12:30 am as of this writing) and hope that the couple of mugs of coffee I had drink a while ago could effectively stave off sleepiness as far as possible.

If you’re wondering what team I am supporting, I must say that I must be rooting for Liverpool since I have been more inclined to watch England’s Premier League on cable television in recent days than the highly irregular Serie A of Italy or Primera Liga of Spain (irregular means sports channel carry them in a certain year but not every year).

Liverpool’s Stephen Gerrard is one of Europe’s hottest players nowadays and with Peter Crouch on the striking front, the men in red could just do a repeat of their 2005’s victorious campaign of Europe’s most coveted title, beating the same AC Milan after being down 3-0 at halftime. Although this time the law on averages could just catch up with Liverpool since they have already won this title a couple of years ago and so maybe now, it’s payback time for AC Milan. You know in sports, they always say that you can’t win all the time for the law on averages would soon catch up on you, and you can’t always have a good shooting night, for the averages would always be there to correct the statistics. Unless of course you are Michael Jordan; to whom the law on averages seems to be inapplicable—especially during his superlative playing days for Chicago in the mid-90’s.

Gerrard and Crouch were main anchors in the English national team that got haplessly booted out by the surprising Portugal team in the quarterfinals of last year’s World Cup event; that this upcoming UEFA Champion’s Cup match feels like a dream World Cup encounter between England and Italy (the current Cup holder) since Gennaro Gattuso, the elemental factor in last year’s successful World Cup run for Italy, is also on the AC Milan side.

If I imagine perhaps a World Cup finals between Italy and England, which is a dream match-up for me, then this must be how it would feel like—Liverpool versus AC Milan.