Barstool’s Guide to Champions League Group Stage Bonanza (Day 2)

Sam's Army9/16/2015 5:23 PM

Sam’s Guide to Champions League Group Stage Bonanza (Day 2)

Hi haters,

As you know, it’s a pretty tough day to be an EPL fanboy. I mean, shit, at this point it’s been a bad couple years to be an EPL fanboy.

But know what? Playas fuck up and shooters keep shooting, and at some point (soon) the extra billions that have been flowing into the league will begin to tip the scales. That apparently hasn’t happened yet based on yesterday’s Mancunian Massacre – or perhaps everybody is reading a little too much into the second half collapses of both City and United.

Regardless, that was yesterday. Today is a brand new day replete with enough glorious soccer to help forget, if for a moment, the shambolic performances of yesterday thanks to more…

That’s still really all there is to say about that.

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CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Some of you will recall that I went through some of the important storylines to watch out for in this season’s competition and also offered up some bold, spicy and waaaaay too early predictions on the tournament as whole. Those can all be found right here in YESTERDAY’S POST.

So go back and read that if you want to get appropriately fluffed for the group stage and/or want to write down all my stupid predictions to make fun of me later. But no need to rehash all that again today, so let’s jump right into the mouth-watering matchups the Champions League gods have seen fit to provide us with today…

Oh, right, you probably want at least some semblance of a recap of yesterday. Fine, here it is:

- EPL sucked
– La Liga dominated
– Ronaldo can’t stop won’t stop scoring hat tricks

Seen here canoodling Sepp Blatter’s girl

There, you happy? Good, great, GRAND… now for today’s games:

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PICKS OF THE DAY

Roma (+500)
Barça (-185)
Draw (+315)

What can you say about Barça at this point? They have won 40% of the Champions League played over the last decade. That’s pretty good. They’ve also begun the season with three wins in three in La Liga play, which is about as good as you can do. If there is one quibble though it is they have not looked quite as dominant as they did last year, “settling” for one-goal wins in all those games. Point being, having to look that hard to find something negative about the club speaks volumes.

Roma comes into the game in fine form itself, with two wins (including one over Juventus) and a draw in Serie A so far. The main problem for the Italians today – apart from Messi, Neymar and Suarez – is going to be the absence of Miralem Pjanic and Kevin Strootman in the midfield, which is an area the club needs to at least compete to control in order to have any chance in this game. Daniele De Rossi and Francesco Totti are nice players who have had great careers but at age 32 and 38 (even when helped out by Gervinho and Iago Falque) they are at serious risk of getting triangle-passed to death today.

Could the Romans pull out a result? It’s not out of the question. The Italians are an experienced side playing at home, and Edin Dzeko and an in-form Mohamed Salah have the size and speed to test a Barça backline that is playing without Dani Alves… which would probably matter more if Alves ever actually, you know, played a little defense. In the spirit of full disclosure, given the mighty tasty odds I will probably dabble a little bit on the draw, but in the end it’s hard not to expect the Catalans to eventually pull it out. Barça to win 2-1.

Anyone who can identify her wins all my respect

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Chelsea (-500)
Maccabi (+1250)
Draw (+540)

Apparently the oddsmakers haven’t watched Chelsea play lately… or maybe they have and Maccabi Tel-Aviv is not all that good and likely to be a little in awe of the situation playing in Stamford Bridge. Probably the latter. The Blues defense has been atrocious so far this season, which is going to be a lingering concern all season and could be an issue (compounded by the absence of Thibaut Courtois), but it seems only a matter of time until the likes of Diego Costa and especially Eden Hazard shake off the rust and get things going. Chelsea to win 3-1.

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Dinamo Zagreb (+500)
Arsenal (-200)
Draw (+325)

Given their penchant for self-buggery in the Champions League, Arsenal really needs to take all six points against the relative weakling of its group, which means winning away in Croatia this week. The English club is healthy and really has no excuse to lose this game. So they probably will.

But what kind of EPL fanboy would I be if I picked against them? (Note: In truth, there really is no reason the Gunners should lose this. They’ve got everybody [moderately important] healthy except

and despite the striker Arsene Wenger didn’t buy they should have enough firepower with Giroud, Sanchez, Ox and perhaps even Walcott 6.0 to get the job done.) Arsenal to win 2-0.

Other games: If you are feeling particularly frisky and fishing for upsets you could do worse than to look at Dynamo Kyiv (+200) hosting Porto (+150) and – for a bigger money pay-out — Zenit (+340) traveling to Valencia (-115). Porto has a great pedigree in the Champions League but not looked all that great so far this season, whereas Zenit is sneaky dangerous… but someone from Spain has to lose at some point, right? Right???