Soccer is quickly gaining popularity within the United States, and one competition that seems to be on the uprise here is the UEFA Champions League, aka “the biggest tournament in soccer” to senior Matt Vasquez.

The Champions League is an annual European-wide club tournament that was started in 1992 by the Union of European Football Association (UEFA). It features Europe’s best clubs such as Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and Juventus and features the world’s best players like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Arjen Robben, and Andrea Pirlo.

At the beginning of each tournament, teams are drawn randomly and put into groups. In order to keep the intensity of the tournament, only the 2 best teams out of each group go through (by beating the rest of the teams in their group) to the next round. To put it in English, it’s a lot like March Madness. But imagine March Madness taking course over the entire year.

What makes this tournament so interesting is that a lot of the teams that face each other during this tournament usually do not play each other because they are in different leagues or different countries. To translate that – you know how exciting it is whenever the Houston Texans play the Dallas Cowboys? It’s a rare game because they are in 2 different divisions. Likewise, this tournament allows for rare games to happen, games you usually wouldn’t see.

Although this tournament does not include teams in the U.S., American’s all over are dying to see the outcome of this tournament. And since the tournament is in its final stages, expect to be hearing a lot about the UEFA Champions League.