This year’s Champion’s League knockout rounds have been amazing, the best in years, and tomorrow’s and Wednesday’s semi’s could hardly be more enticing: Tuesday’s match between Barcelona and Bayern Munich features the runaway leaders of the two best leagues in Europe. Wednesday brings us Borussia Dortmund vs. Real Madrid, both second in their respective leagues and, based on their play in the Champion’s League thus far, the most likely candidates for Europe’s 3rd- and 4th-best teams.

While there was really no way the draw could have failed to create juicy match-ups for the semi-finals, I’m pleased that we avoided Bayern-Dortmund and Barca-Real. We still have the possibility of an all-Spanish or all-German final, and we’ve been spared the prospect of Barca-Real over two legs–I can’t be the only one out there who’s feeling a substantial case of Superclásico Fatigue. And while one could reasonably prefer Barca-Dortmund and Bayern-Real, to keep alive the prospect of the two best teams in Europe playing in the final, with the matchups as they are we get the two best teams playing over two legs (which smooths out the impact of luck) and a replay of the Real-Dortmund group-stage matches, which went advantage Dortmund: a 2-1 win at home, followed by a 2-2 draw at the Bernabeu.

The second legs of the quarterfinals could hardly have served better to whet the appetite for the semi’s. Bayern’s 4-0 aggregate victory over Juventus, the top team in Italy, made it clear that Italian soccer is regrouping, but still has a way to go to catch up to Spain and Germany. Real took a 3-0 lead into Turkey, seemed to put the tie to bed with an early Cristiano Ronaldo goal, then took a siesta themselves during the second half, allowing three goals in 15 minutes, thereby making things much harder on themselves than they needed to, which to be fair is the Real Madrid way. A 2-2 draw in Paris against PSG gave Barca the advantage going into the home leg after, but they were substantially outplayed for the first hour of the match and were honestly lucky to be only down 0-1 at that point. But in the 62nd minute, they replaced an ineffective Cesc Fabregas with a not-fully-fit Lionel Messi, a substitution that totally changed the match. It can be easy to forget just how good Messi actually is, but Barcelona became a completely different side when he came in, dominated the last half-hour, and took the 3-3 aggregate tie on away goals.

Lastly, Dortmund found themselves needing to score two goals without conceding another after an 82nd minute goal by Eliseu made it 1-2, a goal in which he was clearly, obviously offsides. (You might as well watch the whole video of the match highlights here. I could link to videos that just show the problematic plays, but then you’d miss Joaquin’s amazing touch for the first goal and Marco Reus’ ridiculous pass to Lewandowski for the second.) Marco Reus’ goal in the 91st minute time gave Dortmund a heartbeat, however faint, and then, incredibly, they scored the winner two minutes later at the death, a thrilling finish sullied substantially by the fact that Dortmund were twice offsides on the play: Julian Shieber, who headed it down, was offsides when the initial free kick was taken, and then Felipe Santana was clearly, obviously offsides when he scored the goal.

After Europol’s recent report on match-fixing in soccer (read about it here and Brian Phillips’ either hysterical or deadly accurate reaction on Grantland here),
it’s hard not to wonder if the fix was in when you see calls at this level missed as badly as these. Given that the report said that matches have been fixed at the very highest levels of the game, is it crazy to imagine that a gambling ring would have the audacity to try such a thing. To pull it off would require them to be able to get a signal to not one but both linesmen during the game. But what better way to deflect attention than to fix the match on both sides?

Even the best case–that we saw mere incompetence rather than conspiracy–taints what was otherwise a thrilling finish, but from the neutral’s perspective, the preferred side won, as Dortmund’s swashbuckling attacking play might rival Barcelona’s as the most beautiful in Europe.

Every obsessive soccer fan in America is taking tomorrow and Wednesday afternoon off from work so as to watch the games live. You should too.