I'm a regular user of Google Calendars, and just over a year ago, they announced "interesting" calendars that you could add to your calendar. I find it helps me know when I am missing matches because I'm at work. For following an English or Scottish club playing in Europe, you need to select four calendars, one for the league, one for the cup, one for the league cup, and one for the European competition. It is interesting to note the range of leagues covered, as well as some omissions. They include calendars for teams like Oulun Palloseura in the Finnish second division. They recently added the mens' friendly calendars for select national teams (including the US and many European teams.) What I find is a curious omission is that they don't have a calendar for UEFA 2012 qualifying. Are there other teams you find missing?

Another set of games today, another handful of minnow-thrashings and semi-impressive, semi-surprising wins. But it's early in the qualifying yet! This stage doesn't finish up till mid-October 2011, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to allow myself to sneak a couple games on ESPN3 at work on upcoming match days. Today's predictable routs included: Germany 6-1 Azerbaijan; Italy 5-0 Faroe Islands; and Sweden 6-0 San Marino. I wonder what it feels like for the smallest sides to go out on the pitch in these games. Is it painful to walk out there with the absolute knowledge that you're about to get your asses kicked? Is it worth it just to play against great teams? Do you come to a point of acceptance and just enjoy playing the game? My own psyche isn't built for that sort of thing, but I'm sure plenty of people are more well-adjusted than I am. The somewhat unexpected section: Norway 1-0 Portugal; Montenegro 1-0 Bulgaria; and Lithuania 1-0 Czech Republic. There was also the ridiculously-last-second 2-1 win by Scotland over Liechtenstein, which needed a 90+7 goal from Stephen McManus to come about. Not exactly morale-boosting for the Scots, I'd imagine, although you know what they say about three points...

It sort of sneaked up on me, but the Euro 2012 qualifying group stage got fully underway this week. I didn't catch any games (are they even on TV in the States?) but I do always enjoy watching the outcomes in these early stages, when the minnows are still around to either get the bejeesus stomped out of them or to surprise the hell out of everyone except the soccer hipsters who TOTALLY KNEW that Cyprus was way better than any of you thought. And maybe they'd be right, since Cyprus gave Portugal a real run for their money, with the game ending 4-4. Another surprise was France losing 1-0 to Belarus (in which Louis Saha was subbed on in the 69th and subbed out in the 80th due to injury), and I at least expected more from Germany than a 1-0 win over Belgium. The big - and not so shocking - wins include Netherlands 5-0 over San Marino (which, as I tweeted, still sounds like the Dutch were being nice), England 4-0 over Bulgaria, mostly thanks to a Defoe hat trick, and Spain 4-0 over poor little 141st-ranked Liechtenstein. You can see all the match results here - any matches you're specifically looking forward to in these rounds? Any underdogs you think will pull off a surprise advance from the qualifying group stage?