The culmination of the European club season is upon us. Bayern Munich takes on aging interlopers Chelsea in the Allianz Arena which happens to be Bayern's home ground. (For US viewers: kickoff is at 3pmET, and the match will be televised on Fox's main network. In fact, the Fox networks are going full bore with almost-Super Bowl levels of TV coverage see below for the full schedule.

The UEFA Europa League final is upon us. It's an all-Spanish match later today, with Atlético Madrid vs Athletic Bilbao facing off at the National Arena in Bucharest. It's a late kickoff in Romania: 9:45pm EEST, which corresponds to the usual 2:45pmET/11:45amPT for those of in the US.

Sunday, May 6

EPL, Newcastle United vs Manchester City (8:30amET, FSC & Fox Deportes): A massive game in the Premier League, both for the title race and Champions League qualification.

Following Man City's tense 1-0 victory in last Monday's much-hyped Manchester derby, this match becomes the new title-decider.

Saturday, May 5

FA Cup Final: Liverpool vs Chelsea (12:15pmET, FSC & Fox Deportes): Two teams that have been underwhelming in the league but surprisingly successful in cup competitions. Liverpool has already won the League Cup, while this is the 1st of two cup finals Chelsea will be competing for this month.

Stoke away has time and again proven the undoing of Arsenal, with the Gunners having returned from the Britannia Stadium with nary a point to show for their efforts on three of the past four visits. Add to that the troubling statistic that Arsenal has not won a league game in which currently injured midfield stalwart Mikel Arteta has not played and this match is far from a gimme.

Three matches remain, and in light of Chelsea's spot in the Champions League final, third place has now become crucial for ensuring a spot for Arsenal in next year's competition. If the Blues win the European Cup, third will no longer guarantee an automatic group stage spot, but if the qualifying round is what's available, we need to grab the opportunity with both hands.

Frankly none of Saturday's games are all that compelling, but if you must:

FA Cup Semifinal, Liverpool vs Everton (7:30amET; FSC & Fox Deportes): A Merseyside derby at Wembley. Liverpool have been in rotten form, while Everton have been coming on strong.

Bundesliga, Schalke 04 vs Borussia Dortmund (9:30amET; GolTV): The Ruhr derby or, in the German, the Revierderby is the biggest rivalry in Germany.

A busy week across the continent, including five more matches in the English Premier League. But none of those look particularly compelling to us, while there are four compelling and consequential matches elsewhere featuring teams at or near the top of their domestic tables highlighted a huge match in Germany and a derby in Madrid.

It's the post-Easter bank holiday in England, so there is a full slate of Premier League games. But we choose just the late game in London, and from further south another derby from another great footballing European capital:

Fulham vs Chelsea (3pmET; ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.

The three matches we chose yesterday weren't the most compelling: Sunderland-Spurs the most dreary, a scoreless draw, while Lazio beat Napoli 3-1 (highlighted by a fantastic chilena goal by Mauri), and Porto beat Sporting Braga 1-0 on their home ground. There were other interesting results in Italy, where AC Milan lost to lowly Fiorentina due to a late late goal, and later in the day Juve dispatched Palermo, thus pulling even with Milan on points at the top of the table.

Three matches that we choose out of the plethora:

Sunderland vs Tottenham Hotspur (7:45amET): Fourth-place Spurs visit the Stadium of Light. The pressure is on Spurs to hang on to 4th, but Sunderland have been impressive since Martin O'Neill took over in place of the sacked Steve Bruce in December.

Yes, we're eagerly looking forward to the big-name UEFA Champions League semifinal ties but don't overlook UEFA's other final four. (Indeed, as Zonal_Marking wrote for ESPN today, the Europa League deserves more respect.) Given our growing interest in La Liga beyond the Big Two, yesterday's quarterfinal results make for an especially interesting Europa League run-in: Athletic Bilbao, Atlético Madrid, Valencia, and Sporting Clube de Portugal advanced to the semifinals, setting up an all-Iberian set of semifinal ties:

1st legs on Thursday April 19: Atlético Madrid-Valencia & Sporting CP-Athletic Bilbao

2nd legs a week later, Thursday April 26: Valencia-Atlético Madrid & Athletic Bilbao-Atlético Madrid

As we wrote earlier in the week, the Athletic Bilbao-Schalke tie was the only was that was pretty much wrapped up after the 1st leg, with Athletic's 4-2 win in Germany.

So the semifinalists are set for the Champions League, making for some tantalizing fixtures coming up in a couple weeks:

Tues 17 April: Bayern-Real Madrid
Wed 18 April Chelsea-Barcelona

Tues 24 April: Barcelona-Chelsea
Wed 25 April: Real Madrid-Bayern

(and the final: Sat 19 May at Fußball Arena München, Munich)

And now on to today.

Barcelona beat Milan 3-1 in yet another controversial Camp Nou Champions League result, while Bayern finished off Olympique Marseille with another 2-0 victory, for an aggregate score of 4-0.

Wednesday, April 4 (both kickoffs at 2:45pmET):

Chelsea vs Benfica: The match to watch on Wednesday.

We did tune in over the past few weeks for bits of March Madness culminating in Calipari's Kentucky completing the professionalization of the college game last night but we found it mostly uninteresting. And although we haven't found the Champions League completely compelling this year either, we'll certainly be watching these quarterfinal 2nd leg matches over the next couple days to see which clubs advance to the Final 4 at which stage it should get very interesting.