Saturday sees the start of the quad-annual(?) European Championships tournament (aka Euro 2008) being held in Austria and Switzerland. Traditionally this tournament takes place in between World Cups and gives European nations a continuing fixture lists year in-year out.

Last Saturday night I had an opportunity to attend an FC Dallas game at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, which is north of Dallas. Me and 2 of my friends set off on the close to an hour drive to get there about dinner time and got there pretty easily considering the Dallas traffic patterns. They are soccer fans and I am a very casual fan. They explained to me some of the things that were going on during the game and it was nice to be around people who knew what was going on.

The UEFA Champions League is the pinnacle of European football, the cream of the crop, the best of the best, and their best is better than your best. Period. It began way back in July, 124 games later, 74 teams lay by the wayside, two are left and in true Highlander style “there can be only one.”

The life of a sports fan is difficult indeed. Not only do you have you’re everyday life to deal with, you have this weird alternate life that pulls at you every waking moment. It’s hard to explain it to anyone other than a fellow fan of your particular team, it’s a life-long bond that cannot be broken, no matter how many times you threaten to walk away, rip up a season ticket or, indeed, burn a jersey. You’re stuck there, life without parole.

While everyone else here is twitterpating over the semi-finals of Lord Stanley’s Cup, or the Red Wings/Avs series in particular, I feel like I should mention the other semi-finals that are going on, that being the European club competitions…

It was certainly an interesting weekend all over, the biggest news is around Ronaldinho leaving Barcelona for AC Milan, maybe, as the two team have to agree compensation, which is most likely more money that you can imagine (and I can imagine a lot), but Inter have thrown their hat in the ring to (for lack of a better term) cockblock their rivals. I’m surprised Manchester United haven’t been mention yet as they were “in” for him after David Beckham left for Real Madrid, of course they ended up with Cristiano Ronaldo, and I think that worked out pretty good for them.

And with the European seasons wrapping up, and Euro 2008 on the horizon, us football junkies need to turn elsewhere to get our fix, and where else is there but MLS? And I’m here to educate, it’s much more than the dreaded two words “David Beckham”, it’s actually (surprisingly, probably shockingly) very good.