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The Daily Bee: Champions League Game Day

Borussia Dortmund - final training session Photo by Federico Gambarini/picture alliance via Getty Images

You all know why we’re here. Borussia Dortmund will face Chelsea at 3:00 pm in the first leg of the two clubs’ Round of 16 tie in the Champions League. This is actually the first time that these two clubs will meet in any European Competition.

The squad that Ruhr Nachrichten predicts is as follows:

Kobel – Ryerson, Süle, Schlotterbeck, Guerreiro – Can – Brandt, Bellingham, Reus, Adeyemi – Haller

Meanwhile, Chelsea are bringing all their newest signings, including Mykhailo Mudryk, Enzo Fernandez and Joao Felix.

The match is scheduled to kick off at 3:00 PM EST today. Be on the lookout for our match thread!

Champions League Results

Two Champions League matches were held yesterday. Bayern Munich once again defeated Paris Saint-Germain 1-0 thanks to a goal from Kingsley Coman, while Europe’s two failsons this season AC Milan and Tottenham Hotspur duked it out to determine who would be less disappointing. As a Spurs fan myself, I could have told you there was only one way that contest was going to end.

AC Milan 1-0 Tottenham Hotspur

Paris Saint Germain 0-1 Bayern Munich

Discussing the Champions League Hymn

The Champions League Hymn is arguably the most recognizable song in football. The soaring vocals and harmonies ringing through the night air of Europe’s most famous football stadiums is enough to make the hairs on your arm rise; but what do the lyrics actually say?

As it turns out, not much. The meaning is somewhat obscured by the fact that the words of the song are written in three languages: English, German, and French. Here’s what they are when they’re all translated into English:

These are the best teams

These are the best teams

The main event

The masters

The best

The [great] teams

The champions

A great meeting

A big sporting event

The main event

They are the best

They are the best

These are the champions

The masters

The best

The great teams

The champions

I would never describe myself as a master lyricist, but I have to feel that if you gave me two hours and a bottle of wine I could come up with something better that fits the melody of the Champions League Hymn. Is saying “the best” over and over again really the best they could do? If I wrote my articles here by repeating the same news headline over and over again in different languages, I would be described as a lazy hack, but somehow the Champions League gets away with it simply by adding a catchy hook. Such BS.

If a song is going to be about “the best”, then we need to hire the best lyricists. And there are no other better football lyricists than random English fans. That’s why my suggestion is that we go to a random pub in the United Kingdom on a Saturday afternoon on a Premier League gameday, find a group of lads carousing over a few pints, and officially commission them to draft new lyrics for the Champions League hymn. We’ll have to establish a few ground rules, such as that they can’t use the C-word or any references to crimes like drunk-driving, but I guarantee whatever they come up with will be way better than what we have now.

The Daily Buzz

Can you come up with better lyrics for the Champions League hymn?