The streets in the 17th arrondisement of Paris had gone dead by 8 p.m. The Italian restaurant down the block was operating, but it seemed as if it was open only to sell take-out pizzas (like the three we bought) to people in the neighborhood.

You could feel a sort of hunkering down, and a retreat indoors, which was odd considering it was a warm and dry Saturday night in Gay Paree, with a late sunset.

But the absence of activity on Rue des Courcelles made it easy to imagine thousands of our temporary neighbors staring at their televisions in anticipation of …

The Uefa Champions League final.

This is a game so big, it makes the Super Bowl seem small, and all you need do is look at the global television audience for affirmation.

The Super Bowl: Something like 110 million people.

The Champions League final: Approaching 180 million people.

These are not precise figures, but it seems unlikely any rational observer would suggest an American football game would outstrip an elite European soccer championship in overall global eyeballs. The former has marginal appeal outside North America. The latter is watched avidly by large numbers of people around the world.

Thus, the Champions League is the most-watched annual event in sports. The NFL’s Super Bowl is a distant second.

This one was perhaps not quite as glittering an event as it could have been, because it didn’t include Barcelona or Real Madrid, sort of the Yankees and Red Sox of contemporary world soccer.

But a Champions League final will always be watched, and it’s not as if the opposing teams — Chelsea and Bayern Munich — have no appeal outside England and Germany, respectively. Plus, they eliminated Barcelona and Real Madrid in the two-leg semi-finals, so it isn’t as if they didn’t deserve to be here.

If you weren’t watching, and most Americans were not, Bayern was the better team for 83 minutes, and finally got a lead on a goal by Thomas Muller, and seemed likely to win, given how few real chances Chelsea had produced until that moment.

But only five minutes later, Didier Drogba survived a hard push in the back by a Bayern defender to get his head on a corner kick and violently redirect it into the goal.

After 30 minutes of extra time, during which Bayern’s Arjen Robben had a penalty saved by Peter Cech (a very good goalkeeper who has the misfortune to look like Will Ferrell in a silly hat) they went to the shootout, and the same club that lost, bitterly, to Manchester United in the 2008 final, in another shootout, was back exchanging PKs again.

Amping up the pressure in this one was the miss by Juan Mata on Chelsea’s first attempt. When Ivica Olic approach the spot for Bayern’s fourth kick, he had a chance to put Chelsea down (and almost out) at 4-2, but something about him seemed edgy. It prompted me to announce to the two Americans watching the game with me, “He is going to miss. I don’t like his body language.” And Olic’s weak attempt was saved by Peter Cech.

Ashley Cole tied it at 3-3, and then Bastian Schweinsteiger gacked on his attempt (immediately burying his face in his jersey), allowing Drogba to walk up and juke Manuel Neuer into committing and scoring in the other side of the goal.

Chelsea wins its first Champions League final.

I suppose I preferred to see Chelsea win. We, at The National in Abu Dhabi, cover the hell out of the Premier League, and I know its teams fairly well now. I am no particular fan of this London club, which has been owned by an erratic Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich, since 2003. Before the UAE’s own Sheikh Mansour came on the English scene and bought Manchester City,  Abramovich was known as the guy who had spent the most money on a soccer team. Like, hundreds of millions of dollars.

I probably dislike Bayern Munich a little more. They seem like the bullies of the Bundesliga; I might have backed any other German side against Chelsea, but not them.

The National’s main story was heavily analytical and written by a free-lancer who is no fan of Abramovich or Chelsea. A second story, on Chelsea hero Drogba noted how the 34-year-old native of the Ivory Coast is now a free agent (“out of contract” is the British expression), and a third story examined the situation of Robert Di Matteo, the Chelsea coach, who took over for Andre Villas-Boaz in midseason and led the run through the knockout phase of the Champions League, as well as to the FA Cup championship.

(Curiously, the team was only sixth in the Premier League this season.)

We didn’t hear any shouting at the end of the match, here in the 17th. No reaction like the street-clogging celebration I witnessed after France won the 1998 World Cup.

The French didn’t have a dog in the hunt in this one, but like the Super Bowl in America, in Europe you watch the Champions League final even if you are not a fan of the teams involved … or even the game of soccer. It’s that big.