Tuesday, October 21, 2003  

Throughout my time in London there were lots of things that bugged me. One of them was Champions League football coverage. The Champions League is arguably second only to the World Cup in prestige, and involves all the top European teams. In the UK, however, they would only show matches involving British teams, no matter what. So you had this ludicrous situation where last year, the lone live match on local TV was between Man United and Switzerland's FC Basle... rather than the mouth-watering clash between the eventual champions (Milan) and the reigning champions (Real Madrid). I moaned and whined that they'd never do that in Hong Kong. No, in Hong Kong the best matches are ALWAYS on.

I took a gander at this week's Champions League schedule and felt like crying. On Thursday morning, they're going to show Real Madrid against Partizan Belgrade live, and leave Chelsea versus Lazio as a "delayed" game. This is staggering. Yes, Real Madrid are Real Madrid -- internationally-recognised, full of stars, and the best team to watch -- but it's Partizan freaking Belgrade, the weakest team in the whole competition by far. And though I'm sure we'll get a lot of fun highlights of Real slicing Partizan to shreds, I'd much rather watch a tight game between two quality teams like Chelsea and Lazio. And the ultimate irony of all this? While I'm stuck with a choice of two live games and one delayed game, in the UK every single Champions League game is live. You can watch whatever you want there now. Typical.

In other Ravi news, the lovely people at 1UP have put my Made in Wario impressions up. Read them!

Posted at 11:59 PM

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