There is no harm in clinging to the view that what is being dispensed from the FA Cup this season is not plebeian plonk but a restorative draught of honest English ale. Yet surely only those with peculiar (or intensely regional) tastes could claim to be anticipating the pleasures of its latter stages as much as the vintage climax promised in the Champions League.

It will be natural to be swept up in the mass fervour the improbable survivors in the domestic drama will bring to three separate days at Wembley, where there will be an emotional dusting off and flaunting of pride too long buried in the marginalisation that is the unavoidable fate of the majority of supporters in a football age dominated by tiny, wealth-created elites.

But neutrals who insist that the homely confrontations in northwest London will stir their blood more than the struggle for the continental championship must be suspected of inverted snobbery.

When the announcement of the FA Cup semi-final pairings was followed last week by the European tournament’s quarter-final draw the juxtaposition brought a stark, if superfluous reminder that the priorities of England’s heavyweight clubs are impervious to the entreaties of football’s heritage lobby. On one side of that Champions League draw Arsenal were pitted against Liverpool, with the likelihood that the winners of the tie would have to face Chelsea in a battle for a place in the final, and in the other half Manchester United were asked to beat Roma and then, form indicates, Barcelona in order to reach the big showdown in Moscow on May 21.

By comparison, the Wembley semis look less black-tie than overalls occasions: Barnsley meet Cardiff and West Bromwich Albion oppose Portsmouth.

Of course, anybody identifying an aristocrat-and-artisan contrast between those lists of participants is instantly brought to heel by the reality that Barnsley dumped both Liverpool and Chelsea out of the cup, while Portsmouth disposed of Manchester United, and Cardiff progressed to the present stage by humiliatingly outplaying another Premier League representative, Middlesbrough, last Sunday.

There can be nothing but praise for such mocking of the odds, and especially for the successes of Barnsley and Cardiff, which have involved exciting displays of flair and bold ambition. But some of the interpretations of the shock results have been riddled with foolish exaggerations of their significance, none more questionable than the popular conclusion that collectively they amount to a magnificent reemergence of the traditional magic of the cup.

In fact, there’s no denying that the astonishing composition of the semi-finals has been dictated in part by a diminishing of the magic, by the declining ability of the cup to present itself to managers at the higher levels of the game as an almost mystical magnet, a grail to be wholeheartedly pursued.

All of them would be delighted to win it but many are rigorous about preventing their challenge from compromising concerns they regard as more important.

Whether the justification is a title bid or a determination to stay clear of the threat of relegation, they don’t hesitate to field weakened teams in cup ties. Such prioritising is understandable in extreme circumstances and sporadic evidence of it wasn’t unknown in the past, although the principle of saving players for crucial matches is nearly as liable to backfire as is the ludicrously excessive belief in rotating team selections that has taken hold of a remarkable number of otherwise impressive managerial minds.

Whatever the FA hucksters say, commitment to organised football’s oldest knockout competition has become so diluted in so many quarters that the effects are insidiously, distortingly pervasive. That assertion is not contradicted by the recent monopolising of the trophy by the accepted big four of the game in this country, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal.

The gulf in economic and playing power between them and even the closest of their rivals has for years been wide enough to make dominance almost automatic. But the lowering of the value attached to cup triumph was bound to have a noticeable impact eventually and this season it is unmistakable.

Nobody could suggest that Liverpool and Chelsea didn’t strain to escape the mortification of being dismissed by Barnsley or that Manchester United, already harbouring dreams of repeating their historic 1999 Treble, weren’t feverishly competitive against Portsmouth at Old Trafford (the barrage of complaints and accusations with which they responded to defeat was unedifying proof of how much they resented losing).

Yet for me those results are firmly linked with the general, quietly profound change in attitudes to the FA Cup, particularly among the leading clubs. Their dedication to competing for it is nowhere near as fierce or consistent as it once was and the recurring ambivalence in their approach has infected the very marrow of the competition.

Does anyone imagine that 2008 is the first year in a century to see only one team from England’s top league in the semi-finals because this is an era when freakishly effective giant-killers are stalking the land?

Maybe that is the explanation but it is more rational to think the giants have permitted an ethos of limited conviction to infiltrate their cup endeavours. Once an atmosphere of reduced passion is allowed to permeate a campaign, players are certain to have difficulty galvanising themselves to produce their absolute best when embarrassment looms.

The suspicion that such a seeping psychological influence has been at work obliges me to be reluctant to hail the humbling of the mighty we have witnessed lately as a glorious peasant rebellion. No doubt Wembley is about to house memorable scenes but greeting them as a momentous portent that romance is on the march again in the FA Cup would be wildly optimistic.

Let’s just enjoy the occasions for what they are, without overselling the delights of plain old English ale. Some of us, at the risk of being branded elitist, are prepared to acknowledge an abiding preference for the heady wine of the Champions League.

Master Minded the Festival’s finest

All of us expected the 2008 Cheltenham Festival to be historic but nobody could have imagined a script in which Denman surpassed every superlative ever attached to him while contemptuously dismissing the challenge of his stablemate Kauto Star in the Gold Cup – and yet had to yield the honour of being recognised as the performer of the meeting to another of his neighbours in Paul Nicholls’s Somerset yard.

In winning the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Thursday at the remarkably young age of five, Master Minded finished 19 lengths ahead of the previous year’s winner of the race, Voy Por Ustedes, who was in turn 16 lengths in front of the third horse home, Fair Along. But even those extraordinary statistics did not begin to hint at the majesty or the meaning of a display of two-mile steeplechasing the like of which may never before have been witnessed on a racecourse.

The sight left me in such a state of stunned incredulousness that there was an immediate need to check my layman’s reaction against the judgement of several of the most respected professional experts. From them there came a response of awed unanimity. In lifetimes impregnated with the deepest experience of National Hunt racing none had seen anything at two miles to equal Master Minded’s virtuoso performance.

To be precise, one of the most distinguished of the authorities, Ted Walsh, the trainer and pundit whose son Ruby rode the phenomenon, said his memories stretched back to Flyingbolt and that the recollections had suggested comparisons.

That, of course, was an allusion to a god of the jumping game. Flyingbolt was stablemate to Arkle, the supreme equine deity of steeplechasing, and was rated only 2lb inferior to Himself during their shared prime in the mid1960s, so Ted was being no less vehement in his tributes to Master Minded than his Channel 4 broadcasting colleagues, John Francome and Jim McGrath of Timeform, had been.

All three are men whose company I have enjoyed often enough to know it takes a lot to jolt them out of a restrained perspective about either horses or humans and the enthusiasm of their eulogies confirmed the impression that the thousands of us who had the luck to be in the Cheltenham stands on Thursday afternoon had been on hand for a rare demonstration of true sporting greatness. The sense that it was so had enclosed us irresistibly as Master Minded cruised through the Champion Chase.

Moving with such an effortless rhythm round the undulating Cotswold track that he scarcely seemed to be out of a canter, negotiating his fences with a relaxed, economical assurance that made it appear he was easing over them as comfortably as he might have done in a schooling session, he never gave backers of Voy Por Ustedes (of whom this reporter was one) the merest glimmer of hope.

And the effect he created was aesthetically as well as athletically impressive, for he carries himself, even at speed, with a balanced grace that the strictest connoisseur of movement could not fault.

On the day, he was an unforgettable amalgam of wonders but there was one spectator who had to do more than gasp out praise. Phil Smith, the British Horseracing Authority’s senior handicapper, admitted that, like everybody else, he was “blown away” by Master Minded’s brilliance. It was, however, Smith’s duty to assess the performance scientifically and when he had done so the miraculous bay gelding had an official rating of 186, just clear of the 185 allotted to Denman after his magnificent dethroning of last year’s Gold Cup hero, Kauto Star.

Master Minded is now the highest-rated chaser to emerge since Smith became handicapper a decade ago.

It is a relief and a mercy that there will be no assessment of me as a punter. That list of horses’ names I offered last Sunday read like inscriptions on a war memorial before the conflict with the bookies was over. Betting began badly and became incrementally excremental.