Champions League Games on U.S. Television

The world awaits the return of the Cham­pi­ons League over the next cou­ple of days. Begin­ning Tues­day, we have mouth­wa­ter­ing ties to look for­ward to including:

Liv­er­pool v Barcelona
ESPN2, 2:30pm ET

Chelsea v Porto
Setanta Sports, 2:30pm ET

Valen­cia v Inter Milan
ESPN Deportes, 2:30pm ET

Lyon v Roma
Setanta Sports, 5pm ET

To me, one of the ben­e­fits of sec­ond leg ties like the ones above is the away-goals rule. It adds a whole new level of sus­pense to the match. I remem­ber a few years ago watch­ing the Real Madrid against Man United match on TV from Old Traf­ford — and as the goals went in from both sides, the away goals rule put the match out of United’s reach.

The away goals rule changes the dynamic of a foot­ball match. It can cre­ate more excit­ing matches. For exam­ple, Liv­er­pool knows that if they score the first goal against Barcelona, they’ll be in an excel­lent posi­tion to pro­ceed to the next round because it means the game would be 3–1 to Liv­er­pool on aggre­gate. Barcelona’s best bet, mean­while, is to win 2–0 which would be enough to take them through to the quarter-final stages with an aggre­gate 3–2 win for the Catalans.