By stealth rather than in one swoop, the European Super League has arrived

The two best teams in Europe, the most successful club in the history of the competition, a gritty outsider – in some ways the lineup for this week’s Champions League semi-finals is perfect. Each offers in addition an intriguing subplot: Pep Guardiola fighting the curse of overthought, Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool chasing an implausible quadruple, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema raging against the dying of the light, the frankly hilarious prospect of Unai Emery returning to Paris for the final and making a point to Paris Saint-Germain, a club that never took him seriously (perhaps he could have a three-day party to celebrate and invite Neymar along to cut the cake as the Brazilian had him do during his 26th-birthday celebrations).

And yet, and yet … the four clubs come from only two countries and those two countries are England and Spain, who have between them produced 62.5% of all semi-finalists over the past two decades.

Even the outsiders are Villarreal. Theirs may be a remarkable story, a team made up almost entirely of Tottenham flops and targets hailing from a town with a population, as surely everybody knows by now, of only 50,000, who have overcome the might of Juventus and Bayern Munich thanks to the tactical ministrations of a manager who was essentially written off by Arsenal because his Vs sound a bit like Bs – but they come from La Liga. The Anglo-Spanish hegemony goes on.

There are no outsiders any more. What other giant-killers have there been recently? Atalanta – a small club who have performed miracles given their budget, but a team from Serie A. Ajax – the biggest club in the Netherlands. Tottenham – a wealthy club from the Premier League with an enormous modern stadium in London who are funded by a tax