Written By Agastya Sharma (Grade 7)
The COVID pandemic had stopped all sporting events but now they’re flourishing like never before.
The ongoing Champions League has now reached the quarter-finals and the eight qualified teams are prepping with gusto. The Champions League is a football tournament played by clubs across Europe. Football is not one of the most famous games in India, but it has its fair share of followers across the globe. And by fair, I mean 3.5 billion people. It is the top-ranked sport in terms of followers and players.
It is a very simple game with each match played by two teams of 11 on each side. The nets on either side of the ground (pitch) are goals. Each team has to kick the ball in the other team’s goal. Each game is ninety minutes with two halves of forty-five minutes each. That’s Football for Dummies. Someone should write a book about that.
The League began with 32 teams in 8 groups. The top two out of the four in a group qualified for the next round, the round of 16. As the name suggests, 16 out of the 32 teams play matches with two rounds, with an aggregate scoring system.
The aggregate scoring system is that two teams, let’s say X and Y, had a match in X’s home stadium and X won 2-0. The second match X and Y play will be in Y’s home stadium, and if Y wins the second match 1-0, then the aggregate is calculated as 2-1, meaning X won and will go to the quarter-finals.
The matches were all very close, but some teams just crushed it to steamroll their way into the quarter-finals. The qualifying teams for the quarters were Barcelona, Bayern, Manchester City, Lyon, Paris, Atalanta, Atletico Madrid, and RB Leipzig.
Featured Image Courtesy – The Football Faithful
