If ever inclined to turn to the sports pages, Napoleon’s ghost might be a little confused to learn it is as a nation of shoppers that England is emerging as the dominant force of European club football. The unrivalled economic strength of the Premier League, the wealth that ensures its leading powers never have to hesitate about going after any outstanding foreign player or manager who takes their fancy, is being belatedly but impressively reflected in a swiftly rising level of achievement in the Champions League.

Unless Liverpool betray their traditions in the competition by squandering a 2-0 lead against Internazionale at San Siro on Tuesday night there will be four representatives of this country in the quarter-finals while Italy, Spain and Germany will be no better placed than Turkey, with a single presence. And if the Merseyside team do join Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea in the last eight it will be difficult to find a supporter of any of them who is in the least troubled by the thought that all four are managed by nonEnglishmen and rely heavily (in Arsenal’s case overwhelmingly) on playing talents bought in from abroad rather than home-bred.

For followers of major clubs, having expensively international teams is fine, so long as they are internationally competitive. There was a problem throughout the years when the Premier League was deafening us with declarations of how exceptional its standards were without providing anything more than isolated demonstrations of potency where the boasts could be properly tested: in the Champions League. At last it appears possible that from the Premier League’s mountain of money there may come a landslide of superiority in Europe.

Obviously, it’s too early to start celebrating. For a start, it must be said that Liverpool were flattered by their margin of victory over Inter in the first leg of the last16 tie at Anfield and the clear leaders in the Italian league will not be totally despondent about their prospects of retaliating decisively at home this week to the late blows they suffered on February 19. English expectations of a triumph in Moscow on May 21 should perhaps be additionally tempered by the memory of how rarely Manchester United were at their surging, penetrative best during the two matches in which they disposed of Lyons – and by aware-ness that, although Chelsea swaggeringly obliterated the opposition of Olympiakos at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday, it was opposition of scarcely comprehensible inadequacy.

Certainly neither United nor Chelsea had as much right to congratulate themselves as Arsenal did after playing Milan to a standstill at San Siro on Tuesday with an exhibition of football’s high arts worthy of far more than the two goals that separated the teams on the scoresheet. Admittedly, even that exhilarating display had to be evaluated in the context of Milan’s decline. Arsenal’s opponents had already been exposed in Italian domestic fixtures as increasingly decrepit and vulnerable.

They had, nevertheless, shown in the goalless first leg at the Emirates that for all the slowing of limbs in their ageing ranks, their ineradicable residue of class, the sheer know-how the great veterans among them retained about how big games are saved and won, could cover up their weaknesses sufficiently to make anybody facing them think more about their reputation than the reality of recent form. And, of course, when it comes to exploiting that kind of uncertainty nobody is better than the beacon of Milan’s next generation, the vibrant, often uncontainable Kaka.

The paramount demand made of Arsenal as they took the field in midweek was on their self-belief and it was met magnificently. Arsène Wenger had said his young players were sometimes prey to a tendency to forget how good they were and, with the record books telling them that no team from England had ever beaten Milan at San Siro, the risk of such debilitating amnesia was real. But once the action was under way their confidence in their extraordinary capabilities was irrepressible and never in the entire match did they allow the reigning European champions to look like their equals. They first embarrassed and then broke Milan with the sweeping fluency, audacious inventiveness and tactical discipline of their football. It was an intoxicating performance that brimmed with happy omens. None was more encouraging than the sense of coherent integration, of teamwork at maximum effectiveness.

Naturally, however, some individual contributions stood out. Mathieu Flamini and Emmanuel Adebayor were immense but, predictably, it was Cesc Fabregas who most adorned and influenced the night. His inspired feel for the pulse of a game and ability to affect that heartbeat with spontaneously imaginative, technically brilliant interventions has seldom been more in evidence.

Though he will not be 21 until May 4, it is already impossible to think of a midfielder in the world who is more accomplished than the Spaniard when he is in this mood. If he and his teammates could be relied upon to rise consistently to the heights reached last week, the odds of 11-2 currently offered against their chances of winning the Champions League final at the Luzhniki stadium would appear generous. They have been erratic lately in England but such hiccups are no more likely than the defeats of Manchester United and Chelsea in the FA Cup yesterday to affect faith in the European challenge. United will have plenty of backers in the Champions League and many others will fancy Liverpool to progress to the final for the third time in four years and gain a second victory. Perhaps most persuasive of all to punters will be the theory that the physical authority and resilience underpinning Chelsea’s skills will instantly return after the Barnsley trauma and carry them all the way to the trophy.

What is undeniable is that if England has four contenders in Friday’s quarter-final draw - sharing the lottery with Fenerbahce, Roma, Schalke and a Barcelona squad deprived of Lionel Messi - their most worrying hazard on the path to glory should be internecine conflict.

PoeticFestival may end with a eulogy

As the Cheltenham Festival’s vast annual challenge to solvency and sanity looms, some of us are in need of more inspiring words than can be found in the form book. Nothing short of the poetic is required to help us prepare for the struggle ahead but, unless there is a straightforward opting for the Agincourt speech from Henry V, choosing the right verses isn’t easy. Do we want to be urged towards boldness or encouraged to take a philosophical view of what may befall us in the Cotswolds? If we have a desire - perhaps a financially driven necessity - for restraint, then a short poem by Sir Walter Scott, Lucy Ashton’s Song, might suit. Its middle lines tell us: Taste not when the wine-cup glistens; Speak not when the people listens; Stop thine ear against the singer; From the red gold keep thy finger. Well, keeping my fingers from the bookmakers’ equivalent of the red gold has rarely been much of a problem at Prestbury Park. Resisting the glistening wine-cup has been a shade more difficult and so has stopping my ear against the singing of the praises of horses that have soon turned out to be conveyances to doom. When I speak at the races, nobody with any sense listens. So, all in all, Sir Walter’s advice seems either irrelevant or too demanding to be followed in the tumult of hopes and dreams and hedonism that will engulf a huge throng of us on Tuesday. To hell with restraint. Let’s heed the exhortation of Thomas Osbert Mordaunt. In any poets’ handicap, Scott would have to give him stones but, with four lines sometimes incorrectly attributed to the Scottish master, Major Mordaunt certainly captured the Cheltenham ethos: Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!

Throughout the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name. Throughout the sensual world I am prepared to proclaim that if I don’t profit from the following list of Festival competitors the fife will be silent and the drums muffled long before the action is over: L’Ami, Wonderkid (Tuesday); Group Captain, Voy Por Ustedes, Leg Spinner (Wednesday); Our Vic, Kasbah Bliss, Don’t Push It (Thursday); Franchoek, Carruthers (Friday). There will be no betting on the glorious Gold Cup duel between Kauto Star and Denman. That should be watched with reverence.

Full-time for Favre

A beautiful thread of honesty and commitment, a thread of steel, runs through the great career in American football that Brett Favre assures us has now come to an end. In his 17 years as quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, being on the winning team in Super Bowl XXXI was almost the least of his achievements. Favre set numerous quarterback records: for pass completions (5,377), wins (160), touchdown passes (442), passing yards (61,655).

And the 38-year-old is the only man to receive the NFL’s most valuable player award three times.

His career also shows a record 288 interceptions against him but the fans in Wisconsin recognised that accumulation as the penalty to be paid for a gunslinger’s daring. They knew, in any case, that the glory of his career was defined by a simple fact: he began every single game played by the Packers after his debut as a starter on 27 September 1992, racking up a total of 253 consecutive regular season starts, nearly 100 more than the next quarterback on the list.