History to repeat itself in Champions League

IF YOU don’t want to know the results of the Champions’ League quarter-finals, look away now...

The warning comes after your correspondent suddenly came over all Mystic Meg-like while watching the Chelsea-Inter Milan game on the box the other night. When Samuel Eto’o unexpectedly rediscovered his scoring mojo with 11 minutes left at Stamford Bridge, my better half looked up from her book and asked what this meant in terms of the overall balance of the tie. “Well, Chelsea have to score twice,” I explained, “but that isn’t going to happen. Wait’ll you see — Inter players will start rolling around on the ground, Chelsea will get increasingly frustrated and I’ll bet you anything that Didier Drogba gets sent off before the end of the game.”

Minutes later, Droggers was duly being shown his red card and my better half was regarding me with a look which I’d like to think was born of deep-seated wonder and respect but which I have to suspect was really saying: “Pity he couldn’t use his superpowers to do something useful — like the Lotto numbers.”