I really do apologize for being late again, because I know you were all dying to talk about Zenit St. Petersburg vs. Apoel Nicosia. Luckily I'm right on time for BATE Borisov vs. Viktoria Plzen, which kicks off at 16:00 GMT/1:00PM Eastern/10:00 AM Pacific. Today's later games: AC Milan vs. Barcelona; Arsenal vs. Borussia Dortmund; Bayer Leverkusen vs. Chelsea; Marseille vs. Olympiakos; Valencia vs. Racing Genk.
Arsenal-BVB is the big one, with the Gunners a result away from qualifying and Dortmund looking to salvage something from a pretty disastrous Champions League experience so far. Marseille-Olympiakos is only as important as Arsenal-BVB makes it, but the odds are good Jean Makoun will be playing so that's a plus. Pretty much everyone else is talking about Barca-Milan, but that game does not matter one little bit. I could not be more tired of watching Barca and frankly the only thing that could make me interested would be fisticuffs between Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Pep Guardiola. Porto-Shakhtar should be similarly meaningless, but it's not because both teams (clear favorites in their group) have made a mess of things. Shakhtar done and Porto isn't too far off from that, but at least Hulk is playing. Borisov-BATE is pointless, but it might be fun to watch.Valencia looks a decent bet to take all three from Genk, and it Chelsea manages to do the same against Leverkusen the German club is pretty much done.
Aside from BATE-Plzen, these all kick off at 19:45 GMT/2:45 PM Eastern/11:45 AM Pacific. You know you're not doing any work today, so come hang out.