18.23 Chelsea have informed Uefa that they will be handing in their team-sheet at 6.29pm. This is the latest possible moment. More mind games from Chelsea?
18.05 As part of the general Uefa-ness that seems to accompany the latter stages of this competition, the Champions League trophy got taken for a walk today. Squint and you could just about convince yourself that it was Romelu Lukaku and Rafa Benitez doing the heavy lifting.
17.30 The Big Bang, most scientists now seem to agree, took place about 13.7 billion years ago - or 4,600 years ago if you're reading this in the United States.
So intense was the explosion that created the known universe - they named it well! - that most of the cosmic background radiation it created is still around today. In fact, it accounts for around 99.9 per cent of all the light particles in the known universe. (The rest is stars, nebulae and galaxies - in other words, the stuff you actually see.)
Here on Earth, where there's plenty of other matter like air and water and fried food to distract us, the afterglow radiation isn't at all easy to detect. It was only discovered in 1965, when scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey noticed some strange radio interference that they couldn't quite explain.
At first they thought it was bird crap. Instead, it was radiation left over from the Big Bang. Still, they realised their mistake and won themselves a Nobel Prize.
There may not be that much of it, but it is still there. On average, there are around 300 photons of Big Bang radiation in every cubic centimetre of space. It accounts for about one per cent of the static on your television.
That background radiation is a lot like football. It may not be that easy to detect amid the wash of press conference chatter, the clanking fists of a billion pub bores, the monotonous churn of a thousand verbally incontinent ex-pros, the silent swill of internet comment forums, the cynical bleating and brainless publicity stunts of the betting industry and the idle ire of social media, but it is definitely there. And it's on nights like this - a Champions League semi-final, the tie in the balance, glory so close you can also sniff it - that it becomes a little easier to identify.
Either Atletico Madrid or Chelsea will reach the Champions League final tonight. A minimum of 90 minutes of football will be played to decide which it is. Can't put it any simpler than that, really. Enjoy.
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Chelsea are ready for theChampions League semi-final second leg against Atlético Madrid following their 2-0 triumph at Liverpool, writes Jeremy Wilson.
'The Chelsea manager has claimed that Brendan Rodgers backed down from his outspoken criticism of Chelsea's style of football during an exchange of text messages on Tuesday and believes that theLiverpool manager now understands why his team were defeated 2-0 on Sunday.
'Rodgers had accused Chelsea of 'parking two buses' at Anfield and, after the two managers did not shake hands on the final whistle, pointedly contrasted his philosophy with that of the Chelsea boss.
'He will probably shove his CV and say it works but it's not my way of working,' Rodgers said. 'I like to take the initiative in games and let players express themselves.'
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Post By http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/champions-league/10798030/chelsea-atletico-madrid-champions-league-live.html
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