Champions' League turns back into the European Cup

Given the dominance of English teams in recent years, and in their turn the Spanish teams and Italian teams before them, the Champions' League has been a curious competition for a few years. It has become less about which is the strongest team, it has been more about which team from the strongest league hits form at the right time.

Occasionally a team that isn't from the strongest league does win the tournament but they tend to have to face the form team from the strongest league in the final if they do. But with English teams a bit off the pace and a wonderful Barcelona team rightly winning plaudits 2009/10 is a very old-fashioned Champions' League season.

We have the possibility, after tonight, that the reigning Champions of the Spanish, Italian, English and French leagues (Barcelona, Inter Milan, Manchester United and Bordeaux) will be the four teams remaining in the tournament - four national champions from four different countries in the semi-finals, how very quaint! Even failing that scenario the runners-up from France (Lille) and Germany (Bayern Munich) would still mean that four different countries were represented.

This season gives people a possibility to see how exotic the European Cup felt before the bloat of the Champions' League. How it is possible to cheer on, as a neutral, the football team that plays the best football without having to navigate some tortuous combinations of bias to determine which team you despise the least.

It may also generate some unexpected excitement in a tournament that is designed to eliminate risk for the bigger clubs at every conceivable stage. And this excitement may encourage Michel Platini to be bolder in his attempts to help clubs from the mid-ranking leagues - Holland, Portugal, Scotland (!?) - to be better able to compete in the knock-out stages.

There is no possibility that the clock can be turned back, the biggest leagues will continue to command three or four places, but with English football no longer clearly better than Spanish football and with French, Italian and German standards rising this could be the trend for the next two or three seasons. A more interesting tournament before one of the major leagues again dominates for a few years and swamps the latter stages of the tournament.