Perhaps it was the exposure, at an impressionable age, to the immortal 7-3 match between Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt back in 1960, that led an entire generation to harbour unusually high expectations of the European Cup final. Some years those hopes of drama and spectacle are rudely dashed, but more often - and most recently in Istanbul two years ago - the fixture erupts in a display of everything wonderful that football has to offer.
A prevailing air of good humour, even in defeat, is usually among the most remarkable features of European club football's showpiece; even in the years of widespread hooliganism, the darkness of Heysel seemed the exception. In 1992, the last time the final was held at Wembley Stadium, the supporters of the victorious Barcelona and the defeated Sampdoria managed to share the evening without a moment's acrimony. Two years later, after Barcelona's "dream team" had been trounced 4-0 in Athens' old Olympic Stadium by a Milan squad who touched perfection, there was a celebrated moment when a group of Italian fans entered a restaurant in Piraeus after midnight to be confronted by a bunch of Catalans who had already begun their meal but rose from their postmortem deliberations to applaud their rivals.
Will something like that happen this year, when the final returns to Athens? If two sides from the Premiership were to meet in the new stadium, the answer would be: probably not. With depressing inevitability, a story in these pages on Saturday suggested that Greece's entire police force is being mobilised to deal with the potential consequences of an English presence. Which is one reason, I suppose, for hoping that Manchester United fail to eliminate Milan over the course of the next eight days.
On other grounds, particularly in the light of Sir Alex Ferguson's success in creating the third outstanding side of his 20 years in Manchester, no fair-minded neutral could object to United reaching the final. Ferguson himself was at Hampden Park 47 years ago to see Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas score all seven goals for Real Madrid, and it is a fair bet that Cristiano Ronaldo's skills occasionally remind him of another man who stirred the blood that night, the unorthodox winger Francisco Gento.
Given the intensity of the rivalry between the Premiership's top clubs, and the aggressive nature of their football, the presence in Athens of any two of the three English semi-finalists would guarantee excitement on the pitch. But the Champions League is the descendant of the European Cup, which was invented to pit the continent's champion clubs against each other, and to see two clubs from the same league in the final still seems like an offence against nature.
It has happened twice before, of course, first in 2000 when Real Madrid beat Valencia 3-0 on a very pleasant but slightly inconsequential evening in Paris, and again three years later when, after a sterile 120 minutes of absolutely no interest to anyone outside northern Italy, Milan beat Juventus on penalties.
Two English teams would very probably come up with the sort of match that attracts a worldwide television audience; to the purist, however, the occasion would necessarily lack a vital dimension. And just as the all-Spanish and all-Italian finals did not presage total domination of Europe by La Liga or Serie A, so claims on behalf of the Premiership should not be made without caution.
