THIS IS THE BEST CHAMPIONS LEAGUE EVER

It's going to be tough to live up to yesterday's games; Milan nicking a point from Barcelona at the death at Camp Nou, Ivan Perisic's stunning volley to bring Borussia Dortmund level with Arsenal, Hulk's jaw-dropping free kick for Porto against Shakhtar Donetsk. Best of all, every game was competitive; Chelsea's 2-0 win over Bayer Leverkusen was the day's most lopsided result and that was 0-0 until the 67th minute. You'll occasionally see some pretty one-sided affairs at this stage of the Champions League; not yesterday.

Still, there are some very intriguing looking games on today's slate. Manchester City-Napoli is probably the most high profile of the bunch, and Kirsten will be in the corner breathing into a paper bag with occasional tequila breaks for the duration. Benefica-Manchester United is getting plenty of hype as well because, you know, Manchester United and all, but Benefica are a fine team and could well make this one interesting. Villarreal-Bayern Munich features two big clubs with a lot of first-rate talent.

In terms of games not involving Big-Three leagues, Ajax-Lyon has the potential to be a great one; same for Lille-CSKA Moscow. And in games with the potential to get ugly, Dinamo Zagreb hosts Real Madrid while Trabzonspor travels to the San Siro to face Inter Milan. Will the big boys take care of business? What young star from a lesser know league, beloved by fans as a deity, perform well enough for Manchester City to pay £50 million to put on their bench? Will Kirsten make it through the afternoon?

For live coverage of today's Champions League games, head on over to SB Nation Soccer.

Aston Villa won't be playing in the Champions League any time soon, but that doesn't mean we can't still talk about it! Quite a few good games today; the biggest is likely AC Milan-Barcelona, but quite frankly I'm not especially interested in that one. Milan bores me to tears and as incredible as Barcelona are, I've gotten just a bit tired of watching them to be frank. If I want to be able to actually enjoy the latter stages, I'm going to need to limit my exposure.

The game I'm most excited for is Borussia Dortmund-Arsenal. If you haven't watched Dortmund, do yourself a favor. They are amazingly fun and everything to love about German football all rolled into one. Plus they have a guy named Götze. What's not to like. It will also be interesting to see whether Arsenal are any closer to getting the ship righted; frankly, I'm expecting Dortmund to win this one in fairly comfortable fashion, but the Gunners clearly have enough talent to prevent that from happening. It's just a matter of whether they can actually not play horribly.

Also games worth watching: FC Porto-Shakhtar Donetsk (this might be the most entertaining of all of them, honestly) and  Olympiakos-Marseille (if you want to watch Jean Makoun be awesome and weep.) But you can talk about any and all of them below; if you have actual insight on APOEL F.C. (that cannot be gleaned from their Wikipedia page) I will be duly impressed.

For live coverage of today's Champions League games, head on over to SB Nation Soccer.

Rubin v Barcelona kicks off at 9:30 am PT, 5:30pm BST, and sometime in the middle for most others. What else do we have today? All these are 11:45am, 7:45pm:

Tottenham v Twente (Cartilage Free Captain)

Inter v Bremen (I think I put Inter on the list yesterday, meaning I probably just can't read)

Tel-Aviv v Lyon

Schalke v Benfica

Valencia v United (Busby Babe)

Rangers v Bursapor

Panathinaikos v Copenhagen

As far as I can tell, no lower-league matches going on today...really wish they would split them up so that I could have more to pay attention to.

Today's matches start at 9:30am PT, 5:30pm BST, with Spartak Moscow against Žilina. The rest make for a lovely lunch break for those of us lucky enough (ha) to be on the West Coast, with 11:45 am start times:

Basel v Bayern

Roma v Cluj

Chelsea v Marseille (WAG Preview)

Auxerre v Real Madrid

Ajax v Inter

Partizan v Arsenal (Short Fuse Preview)

Braga v Shakhtar Donetsk

We've also got a full slate of lower-league matches happening at the same time. Go Exeter!