MANCHESTER United's advance to the last four of the Champions' League, where they went out to Borussia Dortmund at Old Trafford on Wednesday night may well be the furthest any English club gets for some considerable time unless the domestic fixture list is reduced.
Next season United, virtually certain to win the Premier League for the fourth time in five years will go straight back into a Champions League increased from 16 teams to 24. With the quarter finalists drawn from six groups of four the winners and the two best placed runners up they would not have to play any more matches to go the same distance.
In 1998-99, however, UEFA may decide to divide the tournament into four groups of six, with the top two going through which would mean each club having to play 10 games simply to reach the knockout stage. It depends on whether a plan put forward by Juventus and accepted in principle can be worked out in practice.
UEFA, moreover, is keen on another idea of Juventus's to one off semi finals and the final at a neutral venue, rather like the European Nations Cup in the old days. If both schemes were taken on board it would mean the Premier League runners up, who from now on will earn a place in the qualifying round, having to play 15 European matches to get as far as Manchester United have just done in 10.
The case for reducing the Premier League to 18 clubs would become overwhelming and the teams competing in the Champions League would simply turn their backs on the League Cup, much as United have done already.
The reality, however, is that the chairmen who could not agree to extend the present season to ease Manchester United's fixture congestion would be unlikely to accept a reduction of the Premiership to help the small number of clubs likely to be involved in future Champions' Leagues. Add in the growing number of dates left blank by international calls and the prospect of easing the congestion looks bleaker still.
As for the events of Wednesday night . . . well, haying witnessed, on successive evenings, the respective failures of Chesterfield and Manchester United to win semifinals against Middlesbrough and Borussia Dortmund in FA Cup and Champions League, comparisons are hard to resist.
Was it simply, a case of Spireites followed by pyrites, foolish fancy at Hillsborough, fool's gold at Old Trafford. No, not really. That would be a harsh judgment on the efforts of both sets of players.
In each game, however, the greater part of the optimism was punctured by a defence piercing pass which led to an early goal that cast the rest of the evening in stone. Both Juninho and Moller caught the defenders square and stationary with the timing of the balls which created the chances accepted by Beck and Ricken.
The losers' Scottish managers, John Duncan and Alex Ferguson, accepted their disappointments with dignity, but it is hard to escape the feeling that Ferguson's best chance of winning Europe's most prestigious club tournament has already vanished.
It disappeared, moreover, not with Dortmund's 1-0 victory at Old Trafford on Wednesday night which completed a 2-0 win on aggregate for the German team and earned them a place in the final against Juventus, the holders, but with the chances to score away goals that United missed in the Westphalia Stadium two weeks earlier.
Dortmund are not in the Juventus class but their mixture of experience and youth's worldly wisdom and burgeoning confidence, was always going to make them hard to be at.
The summer sales will decide what sort of shape United are likely to be in by the time Ferguson resumes the quest for his personal grail. In the meantime there is bound to the speculation about the future of Eric Cantona, who in each of the matches against Dortmund missed simple scoring chances at a crucial stage.
Zinedine Zidane's of Ajax when Juventus won 4-1 in Turin offered a pertinent reminder, of why Fiance can continue to ignore Cantona with impunity. On Wednesday Eric the footballer looked more in need of a resurrection than Eric the artists's model.
