Eighteen titles between the pair, a stellar cast list, star-studded for the opening night. And on it went, hyperbolic to its core, the roll-out of the world’s greatest club competition. Welcome back, Champions League.

The Bernabéu was an obvious place to start, Zadok the Priest calling us to order with its epic chorus as the players emerged from the tunnel. But hold on a minute. Inter Milan, a fine team and a lively presence on the night, are coming from a different place than heroes past.

Serie A is not the elite cauldron it was in the latter half of the 20th Century. Indeed, take the Madrid teams and Barcelona out of it and, despite the protestations of José Mourinho, La Liga must also doff its cap to football’s economic superpower, the Premier League.

Mourinho would have the presence of Kylian Mbappé, Vinicius Jr and Jude Bellingham at Madrid, and Lamine Yamal at Barcelona, as evidence of La Liga’s superiority. “The best players in the world are here,” he boasts. They are, but too thinly spread to substantiate his argument of La Liga supremacy.

Europa League champions Aston Villa have yet to register a goal in the Premier League in three games this season. They sit a place above the relegation zone with one point and a negative five goal difference. Their opening Champions League fixture at Club Brugge, a straightforward 3-2 victory, was effectively football rehab after a tough start, a place to regain equilibrium before the hard yards resume at home to Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

Manchester United return to the Champions League on Thursday against a team from Azerbaijan that celebrates its ninth birthday this week. Sabah gained promotion to the top tier in their first season because the four qualified teams that finished above them did not meet licence requirements to play in the Azerbaijan Premier League.

The Sabah rise owes its acceleration entirely to a Uefa coefficient designed to provide opportunity to all teams from 37 associations irrespective of status, enabling clubs from lesser leagues to qualify for the Champions League through the qualifying system.

Sabah were unseeded and had to beat three teams to reach the group stage beginning in July against Welsh Champions The New Saints. They play in a 9,000-capacity stadium and are the second team from Azerbaijan after Qarabag to qualify for the league stage.

Whilst Sabah’s emergence is improbably romantic, it hardly supports the claims of the Champions League to be the world’s premier club competition. It begins to feel like that only at the quarter-final stage when the usual suspects gather to fight it out.

All six Premier League teams made it to the round of 16, and Arsenal to the final, where they fell on penalties after drawing with Paris Saint-Germain. Had the spot-kicks gone their way, Arsenal would have been lauded as the best club team in the world when, in truth, it was harder for them to secure their first Premier League title for 22 years, and far more rewarding.

The Champions League is, like the World Cup of 48 teams, a bloated, made-for-TV pageant predicated on commercial imperatives, not sporting. The competition is all veneer, utterly without jeopardy or the big clubs during the league stage.

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It is sold as elite competition when, in reality, it is the FA Cup third round on repeat all the way to the last 16. Only then does it get interesting, and only vaguely so since anyone with a cursory acquaintance with the game can take a punt on quarter-finalist suspects from the list. PSG, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal anyone?

City eased through their first CL engagement in Porto in second gear, effectively preparing for the real challenge this week: the Manchester derby at Old Trafford. Every weekend in the Premier League is derby week in terms of scale and intensity.

The Champions League is just a cup competition after all, albeit with bells and whistles.