As I sug­gest­ed in my last col­umn, Car­ni­val's vi­brant chaos brought lo­cal sports to a screech­ing halt, a tem­po­rary truce where ath­letes trad­ed their jer­seys for cos­tumes to “pelt waist”, al­beit with a wary eye on their waist­lines.

The oth­er most im­por­tant is­sue is that many of the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties were be­ing rent­ed out by the band lead­ers as rest stops or to pro­mot­ers to ex­e­cute their car­ni­val fetes, where the on­ly ‘runs’ be­ing made were to the bar and the on­ly ‘tack­les' be­ing made were by cool­ers. Thank­ful­ly, many oth­er sports world­wide could have at­tract­ed our at­ten­tion.

While the na­tion sur­ren­dered to so­ca, yours tru­ly fo­cussed on the knock­out stages of the UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League (UCL) and the ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy while al­so keep­ing one eye on T&T's women crick­eters try­ing to re­gain the re­gion­al Su­per 50 tro­phy that has elud­ed them since 2014.

In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, the UCL had adopt­ed a new for­mat this year, where­by each team played eight games against eight dif­fer­ent op­po­nents. This re­placed the pre­vi­ous for­mat we all knew and loved of six group match­es against three op­po­nents. Un­der the new for­mat, each club played four home games and four away games with the re­sults de­ter­min­ing their place in the over­all Cham­pi­ons League ta­ble. It meant that UE­FA, in their in­fi­nite wis­dom (or per­haps, in­fi­nite greed), ex­pand­ed the UCL to fea­ture 36 teams, up from 32 last year. It al­so meant an ex­tra two games for the play­ers on a sched­ule that is al­ready packed like an all-in­clu­sive fete where Machel Mon­tano is per­form­ing. More games, more teams, more mon­ey – it's a phi­los­o­phy as old as foot­ball's com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. "If it ain't broke, add more games" seems to be their mantra.

Now here is where it gets in­ter­est­ing, as last sea­son, the clubs were in a group of four play­ing three home and three away games, with the first two mov­ing on to the knock­out stage for the last 16. Now, the top eight au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied for the round of 16, while those fin­ish­ing nine to 24 en­tered a two-legged knock­out play­off. The win­ners of these play­offs filled the re­main­ing eight spots in the round of 16. Clubs fin­ish­ing 25th and be­low went home and pre­pared for their next league en­counter. Not to bore you fur­ther with this, and the rea­son I went in­to it in some de­tail is sim­ply be­cause the pre­vi­ous for­mat was work­ing fine, but the new for­mat seems to be a maze de­signed by some­one sit­ting in UE­FA of­fices who thinks spread­sheets are a spec­ta­tor sport.

Re­minds me of a cer­tain re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion! So what hap­pened was that Re­al Madrid op­posed Man­ches­ter City in an ear­ly round, where­as this game could have been a fi­nal (even though this tie could have hap­pened un­der the pre­vi­ous for­mat, it was far less like­ly). But, as sure as Lost Tribe win­ning "Band of the Year" is every year, the of­fi­cials will say the for­mat has worked beau­ti­ful­ly, even if the fans were left scratch­ing their heads for most of the com­pe­ti­tion; let’s wait for it!!

Any­how, let’s get on­to the field with what we have: 16 teams vy­ing to win the UCL. While the great­est show was hap­pen­ing in our streets on Car­ni­val Tues­day, the first eight teams were fight­ing it out to get to the quar­ter­fi­nals. The Eng­lish teams Ar­se­nal and As­ton Vil­la, af­ter both play­ing the first leg away from home, seem to be com­fort­ably head­ing in­to the quar­ter­fi­nals, with Ar­se­nal win­ning 7-1 and Vil­la win­ning 3-1, cruis­ing like the Epic ves­sel on calm seas. Could there have been stronger teams in­volved with­in the old for­mat? Re­al Madrid's clash with Atléti­co Madrid promised fire­works and de­liv­ered on that promise. Re­al Madrid has a 2-1 lead against their ri­vals go­ing in­to the sec­ond leg; it should be an ex­cit­ing one!

The pick of the games, how­ev­er, was my team. Sure­ly by now, you all know I am an avid Liv­er­pool sup­port­er as they tus­sled with Paris Saint-Ger­main (PSG), and what a game it was. To be frank, it was a smash-and-grab vic­to­ry as PSG, on that day, was by far the bet­ter team, but one of the finest pieces of goal­keep­ing was on dis­play by un­doubt­ed­ly the world’s best goal­keep­er: Alis­son Beck­er. The Brazil­ian made at least eight stun­ning saves from 10 shots on tar­get. Need­less to say, Liv­er­pool had one shot on tar­get and scored, but that is the game some­times. It’s all to play for next Tues­day, and what a game it should be. Liv­er­pool’s stun­ning vic­to­ry against the back­drop of be­ing com­plete­ly out­played by PSG was a tes­ta­ment to the un­pre­dictable na­ture of foot­ball and a re­minder that some­times, one shot is all it takes. Of the oth­ers, Barcelona, Bay­ern Mu­nich, and In­ter Mi­lan should go through eas­i­ly, but foot­ball at its finest could al­ways throw a few sur­pris­es.

Turn­ing to the Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy, the two best teams have made it through to the fi­nal on Sun­day: In­dia and New Zealand. No doubt In­dia will start as favourites but New Zealand is play­ing some sol­id crick­et. Both their bats­men and bowlers are click­ing at the mo­ment, and their field­ing is ex­cep­tion­al. In Rachin Ravin­dra, the Ki­wis have an ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent, es­pe­cial­ly with the bat, but he can al­so take the ball and give his team some use­ful overs to not on­ly lim­it the runs but al­so take a wick­et or two. Matt Hen­ry, Kyle Jamieson, and Will O’Rourke can move the ball and get some bounce, and if the pitch turns, Michael Bracewell, Mitchell Sant­ner, to­geth­er with Ravin­der and the part-timer Glenn Phillips, can get some use­ful wick­ets.

In­dia, as al­ways, will be dif­fi­cult to beat, but they strug­gled against a sec­ond-rate Aus­tralian at­tack. Ro­hit Shar­ma is not the bats­man he was a few years ago, and even Vi­rat Kohli, even though he got to 84, seems vul­ner­a­ble ear­ly in his in­nings. Shub­man Gill and Shreyas Iy­er will have to per­form well with the bat if they are to get over the line. The bowl­ing is steady with Mo­hammed Sha­mi lead­ing the at­tack, but I am go­ing to stick my neck out and go with the Ki­wis to win as they did in 2000 when the coun­tries met in the fi­nal in Nairo­bi.

Of the oth­er coun­tries, Afghanistan con­tin­ues to im­prove but so much de­pend­ed on the bat­ting of Ibrahim Zad­ran. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Rah­man­ul­lah Gur­baz did not come off with the bat, but their vic­to­ry over a de­flat­ed Eng­land team was their high­light.

Aus­tralia, with a very green bowl­ing at­tack, did very well to get to the semi­fi­nals, show­ing Aus­tralian crick­et's strength.

Eng­land, with that huge to­tal against Aus­tralia, still could not win it as too much de­pend­ed on Jofra Archer and Adil Rashid. They will have to go and re­think their crick­et.

South Africa choked again when it mat­tered most. They have so much tal­ent, but when it comes to the big games, they con­sis­tent­ly fal­ter.

Bangladesh was out­classed as ex­pect­ed, and Pak­istan would be ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed with their team's per­for­mance.

Both tour­na­ments are set­ting up for a pul­sat­ing cli­max grand fi­nale, a fit­ting end to a sport­ing in­ter­lude be­tween Car­ni­val's rev­el­ry. En­joy!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er