Munchen on scraps tonight

I would kill for a ticket for tonights Aberdeen-Bayern game. All right, that's a downright exaggeration and lie. I wouldn't even give a limb (though I would if you could get me to Old Trafford on Saturday night). But I would give quite a few of your British pounds in order to savour the experience.

There are two reasons for this. One is the fact that it's a sell out. The dullest match can be made a gazillion times better just by the presence of a loud, boisterous, on edge crowd. If they're Aberdeen fans (who, quite frankly, are only happy when their teams playing crap and losing to a team just as crap, and the referees having a shocker), then all the better. Back when I was a student, games against the Old Firm would sell out, and, particularly when it was Rangers (I was at the match where the riot police turned up - it was a shocker of a game, actually, apart from Amoruso's magnificent long range strike), Pittodrie was a glorious bubbling pot of emotions. Tonight will be like that. At least until Bayern score their fourth goal.

And that leads us on nicely to my second reason. In this neck of the woods, you just don't get to see players of this quality. Not since the days of Laudrup and Larsson (if I needed to choose one, I'd have Henrik, but only just; they're practically deities as far as I'm concerned) has Scottish football really had world class players on show. I know we still have the likes of Ferguson, Nakamura and, um, Mikoliunas (just testing that you're still concentrating), but it's not the same. This is why I did that 600 mile round trip just to watch Gerrard and Torres at Middlesbrough on a cold Saturday in January, and why it was completely and utterly worth it.

So tonight Bayern turn up with names like Kahn, Toni, Klose, Podolski, Schweinsteiger - which really does mean pig-herder or something - Lucio, Ze Roberto, names that we'll still remember 10 or 15 years down the line as players who, at their peak, lit up their part of the footballing world. And 22,000 Dons fans will be able to say they saw them play. If only Ribery was there too...

As an aside, I appear to have been asked to write the match report for caleythistleonline.com for Caley's home game with Dundee United on Saturday. I shall do my best to throw all my smart wit at it (so that won't take long, then), though if we lose it will probably read more like a suicide note. Anyway, my pseudonym is "Hislopsoffsideagain" - anyone who isn't a Caley fan and recognises the reference should win a prize (but won't because I'm a tight sod)

Keep the comments coming, chaps, there's nothing I like better than to read the rants of people just as deluded as I am, although in the case of the Montrose fan I really do think some professional help might be needed - there are clearly a few underlying issues there...

L.