2010 Champions League Final in Madrid, 2010 UEFA Cup Final in Hamburg

The 2010 Champions League final will be held at the Bernabéu, home to the team that has won Europe's top club competition on more occasions than anyone else, Real Madrid.

The Spanish stadium has hosted the final three times, most recently in 1980, and was battling for this honor with Wembley and the Olympiastadion in Berlin. It can hold just over 80,000 people and will surely be filled to capacity come May 2010.

Personally, I think this event should always be held at a neutral venue, at least as long as UEFA wants to keep the final a one-off affair instead of a two-legged tie. If Real Madrid were to reach the final in 2010, something not out of the realm of possibility given Real Madrid's perennial status as a world power, it would be a huge advantage and one that isn't fair in the least.

UEFA also announced that the 2010 UEFA Cup final will be held at Hamburg's HSH Nordbank Arena, formerly (and more commonly) known as the AOL Arena.

This stadium was also used in the 2006 World Cup and, with its UEFA 5-star rating, is eligible to host the Champions League final as well. It's new; construction took two years to complete and was finished in 2000, and Hamburg SV routinely plays to crowds of over 50,000.

In other UEFA-related news, the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Super Cup matches will be played at the Stade Louis II in Monaco, as has become the custom. The 2010 UEFA European Under-19 Championship was awarded to France, and the same year's U17 event to Liechtenstein, while Nyon, Switzerland will stage the 2009 UEFA European Women's U17 Championship.

Cahill's Injury is a Massive Blow for Everton

Everton midfielder Tim Cahill will likely miss the rest of the season, manager David Moyes said today, after the Australian was diagnosed with a recurrence of a broken bone in his foot.

It's no secret that I think very highly of Cahill as a player; in December, I wrote a post illustrating and praising his proclivity to come up with clutch goals for his team time after time after time, for both Everton and Australia. This is a guy who plays in the center and can really spur attacks out of what is an otherwise fairly pedestrian Everton midfield. As I said, he scores big goals almost routinely and just has a knack for being in the right place at the right time, and that can't be underestimated in soccer.

Without him, it's just difficult to see how the Toffees could finish ahead of hated rivals Liverpool in the Premiership, hopes of which were fading anyway. They'd certainly need a result at Anfield in the second Merseyside derby of the year on Sunday, preferably a win, but who's going to score that clutch goal? Jamie Carragher and Martin Skrtel are more than capable of shutting the Yak down and if they do, who else for Everton will step up?

That's the question not only for this game, but for the rest of the season as well. It's feasible that Portsmouth and Aston Villa can catch Everton and turn what was a possible 4th place finish and Champions League berth into a 7th place finish and not even another crack at the UEFA Cup. I'm not saying that is what will happen, but I truly believe that losing Timmy Cahill will be a huge blow to this team.

Everton's record in all competitions when Cahill has played is an astounding 19-4-5. Sounds like a pretty valuable player to me.

Wayne Rooney Joins "I'm On Setanta Sports"

Stop the presses, stop the presses!!

In a move that likely will not pacify Dave from Newcastle, who was undoubtedly crushed when Shola Ameobi left Tyneside to join Stoke City on loan, Wayne Rooney has joined The Special One and Sven Goran-Eriksson on "I'm on Setanta Sports".

This is excellent, just fantastic. Like the other two gentlemen, English is not really Rooney's first language. Wazza is known for a lot of things but grammar and pronounciation are certainly not chief amongst them.

Unfortunately for Sven, who had fears about this on the most recent episode, it looks like he'll be involved in a bit of a rotation system with The Special One's new signing now onboard.

If Wazza could convince his fiancée, Coleen McLoughlin, to make a guest appearance or two, we'd really be in business.