An admission that maybe the Premier League is the ‘best in the world’

The Fiver has a recurring nightmare. It’s October 1992 and Richard Keys, his signature plantation of chest hair fighting its way out of a mustard blazer, is forcibly suggesting that we join him for five hours’ coverage of “The Best League. IN THE WORLD.” We sit through Oldham 1-0 Everton, in which Ian Marshall and Robert Warzycha fight to the death for the Miss of the Season award, only to realise that all our European friends are in another room watching Baresi, Maldini, Van Basten, Rijkaard, Boban, Baggio, Möller, Kohler, Vialli, Casiraghi and AC Jimbo while being fed tagliolini pasta with fresh lobster and black truffles and supping glasses of vintage Giuseppe Quintarelli Amarone della Valpolicella Classico Riserva DOCG.

Slowly, the full horror emerges: the Fiver is doomed to watch Oldham 1-0 Everton on repeat for eternity, and there’s no tagliolini pasta, either. Then we wake up and realise that such a peculiar torture is probably still preferable to real life. For much of the last 30 years, the insistence – one part smug, two parts Brexit - that the Premier League is the best in the world has felt on the desperate side of pathetic. There were a couple of spells of relative dominance, particularly from 2006-09, but they were usually ended by an unsheathing of the Real Madrid chequebook. This time it feels more sustainable, and not even your nostalgia-leaning Fiver can deny that the Premier League is the strongest around.

Two of the last three Big Cup finals were all-English affairs, and there’s a fair chance of another this year. The reason for that is fairly $impl£, but it doesn’t change the fact that English football is as superior as at any stage since the early 1980s. Even Big Cup quarter-finals are starting to