Well, we are a week away from the first Match Day in the Group Stages of the Champions League. I don't know about the rest of you but I am super excited about it. We are going to dominate this year and there will be no doubt which club is the best in the world... Bayern Munich. We will have a bunch of bandwagoners coming and being like "Oh, I love Bayern, they are the best..." And then we will be like "We have always known this...

...But I digress. It is time for the first chance to earn some points and claim your superiority in the bracket challenge.

So far we have had 15 people sign up! Yay, I am so excited. If you haven't signed up and you want to, you can find the post here with the rules. You can sign up over there or over here. It doesn't matter to me. If you don't want to participate in that but you would like to participate in picking match winners over here, that is fine. If you are participating in that part but you don't feel like participating in this part, that is also fine. Basically this is just for bonus points. Any wrong guesses cost you nothing. You get 1/4 of a point for each match accurate predicted. In other words, if you have some kind of magic and manage to accurate predict every single match, you will get an extra 4 points.

Matches:

Group A:

• Dinamo Zagreb vs Porto (Sept 18)
• PSG vs Dynamo Kyiv (Sept 18)

Group B:

• Montepellier vs Arsenal (Sept 18)
• Olympiacos vs Schalke (Sept 18)

Group C:

• Malaga vs Zenit (Sept 18)
• Milan vs Anderlect (Sept 18)

Group D:

• Dortmund vs Ajax (Sept 18)
• Real Madrid vs Man City (Sept 18)

Group E:

• Shakhtar Donetsk vs Nordsjaelland (Sept 19)
• Chelsea vs Juventus (Sept 19)

Group F:

• Lille vs BATE (Sept 19)
• Bayern vs Valencia (Sept 19)

Group G:

• Barcelona vs Spartak Moskva (Sept 19)
• Celtic vs Benfica (Sept 19)

Group H:

• Manchester United vs Galatasaray (Sept 19)
• Braga vs CFR Cluj (Sept 19)

Posting Your Guesses:

Okay, for this section, below is how I would prefer you post your predictions. I will be using Bayern vs Valencia for this example:

Bayern vs Valencia (winner in bold)

OR

BAYERN vs Valencia (winner in capitals)

OR

Bayern vs Valencia DRAW (in case you are predicting a draw)

Due Dates and Other Final Notes:

You have until the start of the first match to post your predictions. As a reminder, you have until then to post your group winners and runners up as well. After that, entries will be closed until we get to the knockout rounds. This is all in good fun and you are in no way required to participate in both parts of the competition if you don't want to. If you only want to post the group winners and losers, that is up to you. You are free to make any changes to your predictions up to the start of the first match on the 18th. Best of luck to everyone! See you in the comments!

Also, on UEFA, a league was set up for anyone wanting to participate in the fantasy game. The invite code for this league is 587908-421855. Please feel free to join us if you wish!

Group Prediction Participants:

1. KateL
2. BabyBrey
3. Gilly
4. Nishant33
5. Twinkle
6. Cousin_Drew
7. BayernMan
8. Smartguy
9. Vrdo4ever
10. Khaveen
11. Adebayo
12. Rohit Bhatta
13. HenryBayernMalta
14. Suleiman Kano
15. Sportsfan1
16. Ibonier
17. grudnik
18. Der Bomber
19. Pete194a

Match Day 1 Prediction Participants:

1. KateL
2. BabyBrey
3. Nishant33
4. adebayo
5. Gilly
6. Markopolo
7. sportsfan1
8. Cousin_Drew
9. HenryBayernMalta
10. Rohit Bhatta
11. Vrdo4ever
12. Ibonier
13. Twinkle
14. grudnik
15. Khaveen
16. Der Bomber
17. Pete194a

Any questions, comments, or concerns? Please don't hesitate to ask. I will be back after the first match day is finished with our first leaderboard of the season!