In mid May, Russian Premier League side Zenit St Petersburg drew 1-1 with FC Ufa. The result sealed the league title for Zenit with two games to spare.
But if Zenit's league championship was a bit of an anticlimax, there was nothing anticlimactic about their celebration.
This past weekend, Zenit midfielder Javi Garcia posted a team photo to his Instagram account unlike any team photo you've seen before.
In it, the Zenit roster is assembled in a stately, ornate room filled with all the Baroque fineries one would expect from an eighteenth-century palace. The players, too, are outfitted for the occasion, decked out in double-breasted coats and breeches, some with martial sashes draped over one shoulder.
Right in the middle of this collection of players sits Zenit head coach Andre Villas-Boas. He and Zenit forward Andrei Arshavin pour over a "map" of the soccer pitch as if it were plans for a momentous battle.
These days, the word "epic" is overused, but this image really does call to mind the sprawling, sweeping novels of Leo Tolstoy, Russia's greatest novelist and author of War and Peace.
Note to all would-be league champions: this is how you celebrate in style.
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From Russia, we next travel to Italy, where a 14 year-old Italian boy recently woke from a four-week long coma.
The boy's recovery is a miracle.
After jumping with some friends into a Milan canal, the young boy's heart stopped beating and he sunk to the bottom of the canal. It took a rescue team 42 minutes to find him and bring him back to the surface. He was rushed to the hospital and attached to life support, but his doctors feared the worst.
Remarkably, within 10 days of intensive treatment, the boy had recovered brain function and, four weeks after his accident, he finally woke up.
After speaking with his parents for a few minutes, the young boy asked his first question: was his beloved Juventus still in the Champions League?
"He has recovered the spirit of the kid his parents and friends knew," his doctor told the media. "He is a great guy, with uncommon intelligence. Every day I talk to him and joke."
Having recovered from his accident, the 14 year-old will now get the chance to watch Juventus take on Spanish giant Barcelona in the Champions League Final on Saturday.
