UEFA Champions League Odds and Lines – Free European Cup Tips and Picks
The UEFA Champions League final is the most important match of the season in European club football. The stadium to host the final is selected by UEFA two years before the match.
The latest UEFA Champions League final was held at Stade de France on 17 May 2006 between Arsenal and Barcelona, which Barcelona won 2-1. In this particular match, Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann was sent off and two late goals by Samuel Eto'o and Juliano Belletti secured victory for the Spanish side who had previously been trailing 1-0 to the Gunners for the majority of the match. The 2006-07 season final will take place at the Athens Olympic Stadium. Nine candidates are bidding to host the 2007–2008 season final - London, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Porto, Lisbon, Moscow, and Seville.
Real Madrid have won this competition nine times. The next most successful teams are A.C. Milan (six titles), Liverpool F.C. (five titles), FC Bayern Munich and Ajax Amsterdam (four titles). For complete list of the winners, see European Cup and Champions League finals or European Cup and Champions League statistics.
The winning club gets possession of the trophy at the awards ceremony, but must return it to UEFA headquarters two months before the following year's final. UEFA gives the winners a scaled-down replica of the trophy to keep permanently, and winning clubs are free to make replicas of the trophy as long as they are clearly marked as replicas and are no larger than 80% of the size of the actual trophy. However, the current competition rules also specify that the actual trophy will be permanently awarded to a team that wins three consecutive years or five times in all.
Five clubs have been awarded the UEFA badge of honour and the right to keep the trophy permanently:
» Real Madrid, who won the first five competitions from 1956 to 1960,
» Ajax Amsterdam, who won consecutively in 1971–1973,
» Bayern Munich, who won consecutively in 1974–1976,
» A.C. Milan, who won for the fifth time in 1994,
» Liverpool, whose 2005 win was their fifth overall.
With a history of more than 100 years of English soccer, the FA English Premier League competition has been one of the best in the world and attracting a global audience of over 450 million in 150 countries. The league was formed by the leading clubs in the Football League Division One breaking away. Since launched in 1992, twenty teams are competing for the championship of the competition and among them, Manchester United has been the dominant force in the league, winning seven titles in ten years. Other fascinating teams are Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, etc. The league is also filled with the best players in the world including foreign stars like Thierry Henry and Didier Drogba as well as England's bests, Frank Lampard, Michael Owen, Rio Ferdinand and Steven Gerrard.
Since 1900s, Italian Serie A has been one of the best soccer leagues in the world. It is consisted of 18 teams and among them, seven best teams including Inter Milan, AC Milan, and Juventus are called the "Seven Sisters." Serie, which means "Series" in English is divided into 3 levels: A, B, and C. After each season, the bottom 4 Serie A clubs have to go down to Serie B and instead, the top 4 Serie B clubs take their place in the A level. Serie A is widely known for its powerful defensive soccer with a lot of tackles and pressures. Like the English Premier League and Spanish La Liga, Serie A has many of the world's best players such as Alessandro Del Piero of Italy, Andriy Shevchenko of Ukraine, Patrick Vieira of France and Kaka of Brazil.
Even though, Spain Primera Liga was established several decades later after the other two leagues started their first season, the league, in which many of the world's greatest players such as Ronaldinho, David Beckham, Zinedin Zidane, Robinho, Ronaldo, and Raul play, now became one of the world's three best soccer leagues. Spanish people are world-widely known as people who have extreme zeal, love, and passion for soccer. The leauge has 3 divisions and after each season, the bottom 3 teams of division 1 are replaced with the top 3 teams of division 2. Primera Liga, a.k.a. La Liga, has two of the world's best clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona. They are century-long rivals and the "hatred" between the two clubs' supporters is very intense.
It was 1963 that the Bundesliga was formed. Before the top divisions were divided into regional groups. In the long term at least some of those regional top leagues did not have enough strong teams to be challenge enough for the giants. The installation of Bundesliga is said to have brought a lift of competitiveness for German football on the international level. As European competitions had just begun, this of course is difficult to prove. Bayern Munich is the only club that has been able to convert a dominance of a team of a particular era into long term success producing structures. Whereas Bremen, Mönchengladbach, Hamburger SV, and perharps Borussia Dortmund (much too early to say) had only eras that were connected with an extra-ordinary constellation, Bayern has been equally dominating in the last 3 decades with its counterparts altering.
The Eredivisie was established in the 1956-1957 season. Dutch football had 'gone professional' two years earlier (1954). Eredivisie was the new name for the first nationwide, professional football league in The Netherlands. Since the 2002 relegation of Sparta Rotterdam the traditional 'Big Three' (Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV) are the only three clubs to always have played in the Eredivisie since the start in 1956. Dutch football fans tend to ignore the names of the sponsors completely and refer to the respective leagues simply as Eredivisie and First Division.
The first football club ever created in France was Havre Football Club in 1872 and the founders were obviously English. But from 1872 to 1890's, the members played three different codes of football : association football, rugby football and combination (hybrid game from the first two ones). Members decide by votation during the General Meeting on November 18th 1884 to play combination but nobody was satisfied. The same year, the name of the club changed for Havre Athletic Club. The association football code received definitively the members adhesion in 1894. At the top of French football is of course the professional French League, which includes Ligue 1 (L1) and Ligue 2 (L2). The teams in these top two levels are fully professional. They also take part in the League Cup, called "Coupe de la Ligue". Note that "Ligue" (with a capital L) is the association of all the professional clubs. It is the body that rules and organizes L1 and L2 competitions.
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