When I first started watching Spanish football, 1988 roughly, Real had the likes of Butragueno, Hugo Sanchez, Michel et al and played superb football. They were fantastic to watch back then, they seem to have spent twenty years buying into the press perpetuated celebrity that is ruining the game throughout Europe. For all their beautiful passing and intricate triangles, the thing that impresses me the most about Barcelona is the team ethic they have created. The pursuit of individual glory is always second to collective success. They press teams as a unit, play simple balls into space and follow their mantra of pass, offer, receive – I read a fantastic interview with Iniesta recently.

The difference outside La Masia and Barcelona in general is that there is very little selflessness in football now. Players are pandered to from the age of 14 or so, concessions made for their every whim if they have any talent whatsoever. Once they buy into the hype, once they believe they are better than the people who pay their wages, that’s when they seem to lose their hunger for the game in favour of an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, rant over.

Guess you’re a Madrid fan Brian?

And I know that I am taking all this much too literally, but there’s also the question of Saturn’s hairstyle, which is much more Hugo Gatti than Florentino or Valdano. If we had had photoshop during Gatti’s pomp, someone would have re-done Saturn in a Boca kit, with a powerless River player in his grasp.

While the Barca socio in me would like to see nothing better than the blaugrana lifting the cup with large ears in the home of the evil empire, I cannot deny that there would be a certain poetic justice in the final being contested by teams led by Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder.