Abigail demanded that I wear my Fulham jersey this morning. Well, it wasn’t so much a demand as the one she selected – after much consideration – from my closet this morning. She is sometimes in the habit of picking out my clothes, but this one was a particularly interesting choice since I had forgotten that Fulham was playing Juventus in the Europa League today. Abigail also insisted I wear my Grumpy hat today, but that is in no way related to this story.

A quick aside to Funtime Jessica: Pbbbbbt!

To understand the Fulham game, you need to understand the Europa League. It’s one of those European soccer tournaments you qualify for if you do well enough in the home league, like the English Premier League, where Fulham plays. The top teams from each league go to the Champions League. The slightly less top teams go to the Europa League. In this round, Fulham was playing Juventus, a storied old team from Italy.

We calls teams “storied” when we mean “not as good as they used to be.” It’s just more polite.

The way the competition works is they play two games, one at the home stadium of each team, the team with the most goals after two games wins. Fulham went to Italy a couple weeks ago and were beaten 3-1 by Juventus. This was not the result they were looking for, but that’s okay, they’ll just take full advantage of home field in today’s game.

Fulham went down 1-0 in the second minute of the game. If they had been a livejournal blog, they would have changed their mood to “sad” or “discouraged.”

To turn about 80 minutes of a 90 minute game into one short  sentence, they got the three goals they needed to tie it up, against all odds. Then Fulham brought on their American midfielder Clint Dempsey, who is only just back from injury. Not long ago, we were afraid he would miss the World Cup. Now he comes back in a huge game and does, well, this …

If you’re wondering who that doddering old man on the sidelines is toward the end of the video that’s Roy Hodgson, the Fulham coach. His reaction kind of says it all.

So, Fulham is through to the quarterfinals of the Europa League and it’s all thanks to Abigail, who picked my Fulham jersey and thus provided the luck the team needed. It’s elementary sports science.

I told you to ignore the Grumpy hat.