2011 UEFA Champions League Final on Fox HD

I won't be tuning in on purpose until the game starts just to avoid Curt Menefee's stupidity on the pre-game. Not that this MLS game between Philadelphia @ Toronto is any better at the moment with Philly commanding an 3-0 lead.

Update: Toronto finally scored. 3-1.

Update 2: Toronto getting closer. 3-2. Only for Philly to strike back within seconds. 4-2.

Update 3: Now its 5-2. Toronto fans are silenced.

Update 4: 6-2 lead by Philly. Only a few minutes left. Toronto wants this game to end now.

While I will watch the game on KTXL HD (Channel 708 Comcast in my area), I really hope that Sir Alex doesn't do something insane like use the same ugly tactics that Jose Mourinho used the last time Real Madrid played Barça. I read about that match and I can do without the illegal hits and excess of "diving."

KMSP HD (Twin Cities, MN) via Comcast Cable. It looks a little washed out color wise and even blurry. Anyone else seeing this?

WNYW-DT NYC FiOS TV

There seems to be a bit of a lag when the camera pans left to right, it's not smooth.

For about 34 minuets into the match FOX had a redundant team names below the FOX SOCCER bug even though it's on the score box on the top left before they removed it.

I noticed that the score box is a second behind the lower third score graphic when both are on screen.

I guess nobody told him that this game wasn't NFL Football, but The-Rest-Of-The-Effing-Planet-Calls-This-Football-Not-Soccer-You-Dumb-Americans.

And the SAP didn't work for me. So much for GOOOOOOOOOOOL!

FOX averaged a 1.8 overnight rating for its coverage of the 2011 Champions League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United, which is an increase of 64% over 2010′s numbers according to a FOX Sports representative.

The best ratings were generated in Washington DC, Seattle, New York, Providence (RI), Los Angeles and Austin. Note that those are preliminary household ratings.

http://www.epltalk.com/fox-scores-a-...ue-final-32027

I think a lot of this increase is probably due to the higher name recognition of the two finalists as opposed to last year. Anyone know what baseball usually gets on Fox during the Saturday afternoon time slot?

Anyone here know anything about this level of soccer? I noticed that this game was much slower, lower in emotion and intensity, less body contact, less injury faking, etc. than the World Cup finals last year. Why? I thought this game was supposed to be "end-all" game and better played than the World Cup.

1. The World Cup Final is a bigger game than the Champions League Final.

2. It was a good game because United tried to square up against Barca and not just hack them for 90 minutes. Pretty much the opposite of the Dutch strategy against Spain.

Thanks for the insight. As a diehard sports fan (golf, SF Giants, SJ Sharks, football) I occasionally watch soccer when there is a big game on like this one. So I know sports but not the intricacies of soccer. My instincts told me that this game was too pretty and I wanted a little more contact. Not as much as the World Cup though. I could see MU backing off the little guy because they were afraid he would deke through them and go in on goal free and clear. Of course he burned them by firing around the backed off defender for the second goal. That was neat. Similar kind of thing happens in hockey.

Soccer at the highest level when it's a knock out game (think world cup or champions league when in the knock out phases) inevitably turns into a really tight affair with very little of the beautiful aspects of the game shining through. The games tend to be low scoring and tense and frankly ugly. (And soccer is by far my favorite sport these days)

This past weekend, however, I think we just saw the rare occasion at this stage in a competition where one team was just superior to the other team. Barcelona were untouchable.

The world cup final is a bigger game, but it's sort of a different type of soccer. In club soccer (like the champions league) the teams at the final stages tend to be just absolutely perfect. Because if the clubs have any defects in their squad, they can just go out and buy a better player in that position with no limitations other than their bank accounts (which is no limitation for the top tier Euro clubs.)

Where as in the World Cup, teams are limited by the playing pools of their nationality. The Americans can't go out and buy a better striker or left back as much as we wish we could. We have to work with what we've "developed" so to speak. So that usually means that the teams in the World Cup (even of the best nations) have more exploitable flaws.

To me that makes the World cup (while perhaps not the "best" soccer) by far the most exciting to watch.

But this debated all the time.