I don't watch the Belgian Jupiler League often...

but I might have to try to check out this afternoon's game for Anderlecht v KV Kortrijk. This 16 year old kid Romelu Lukaku is playing for Anderlecht, and if reports are to be believed, he is like Didier Drogba but with more athleticism and football skill.

Yeah. Crazy. This kid could be the alltime great if he keeps working hard. Pretty tough to do that when you're only 16, but...

Ribery to pick

France winger Franck Ribery has said that will choose his future in the next 10 days: stay at Bayern, or Real Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona.

I don't think he's going to get Cristiano Ronaldo money. Close maybe, but not equal. So unless Chelsea offers to make him number 1 of all time, I think Chelsea can be struck from the list.

My wholly uninformed guess is something like 70% Real Madrid, 18% Bayern, 12% Barcelona.

Rafa Benitez to Juventus?

Juventus claim to be 90% confident of picking up Rafael Benitez. But the Spaniard is also pretty heavily talked about for the not-yet-vacant tecnico spot at Real Madrid. Everyone assumes that chilean Manuel Pellegrini will get the ax after 250 million euros in spending and no championships, even if it was only a year.

Juventus is historically a big club. The scandal a few years back obviously hurt, but Juve have reportedly offered Benitez 10 days to decide if he wants to join them and their 70 million euro transfer budget.

So Benitez is in a funny place: he might get fired after this season at Liverpool anyway. He could rebuff Juve now and hope for Madrid (or Chelsea or Inter etc). He could hope to stick it out with Liverpool. We'll see. Right now I'm tempted to think that he heads to Juventus...but the relative blahness of Italian football may keep him out.

Europa league second leg games

I thought they didn't disappoint. I lost the feed of the Fulham Wolfsburg game, but scoring in the first minute pretty much sealed the game. I didn't get to see much of it, but what I saw was exciting. It was going to be very much an uphill battle for the Bundesliga champs after Zamora grabbed the first minute away goal though.

I ended up watching the Atletico Madrid Valencia second half. Great game. The ref made some very curious decisions though. An Atletico defender grabbed Vigic as he was going up for a header that would almost certainly have been a goal...and he ripped his shirt wide open. Yet somehow no penalty? Amazing. On the other hand, the linesman a few minutes before called offsides of Kun Aguero when Aguero was very clearly onsides. He had a one on one with the goalie with all kinds of time that would have definitely been a goal. Strangely the ref gave Aguero a yellow card for leaving the pitch slowly in the final minute, which means that Aguero will miss the next game.

Hamburg SV will play Fulham and Liverpool will face Atletico Madrid.

Europa League, second leg

The first leg games last week were all exciting. This week Atletico has Valencia at home, Standard Liege has the advantage in Belgium against Hamburg, Liverpool has a chance for redemption at Anfield against Benfica, and Fulham goes to Germany to face defending Bundesliga champions Wolfsburg.

To be honest, I'm pumped about these games. I'll likely be watching and screaming for Fulham in front of my computer monitor because I doubt Fulham will be the game televised here.

By the way, Pablo Aimar's visit to Liverpool will reunite him with Rafael Benitez, after they spent a few successful years together at Valencia.