Gigi Buffon is not given to false modesty.

You might think there are few jobs more simple than working in the Uefa marketing department, but the Champions League is not as straightforward a sell as it seems.

Blame the referee — we all do it.

Spain’s El Clasico is sometimes the most overhyped match on earth, but on Sunday evening Barcelona and Real Madrid lived up to their billing with a genuine classic, illuminated by scintillating displays from the two stars.

Champions League Matchday Two: the tournament is still at the skirmishing stage, yet the draw has thrown up a fixture that harks back to the good old days of the European Cup, when title winners were not protected by seeding, as they usually are now.

It is usual in football for a crushing defeat to be followed by recrimination and the search for scapegoats.

Football these days is full of greedy young men and grasping young women, players and their WAGs, a set of people who inhabit a world of their own, utterly separate from the world of their fans.

Ireland may be pointless in Group C but Italy remain wary of Giovanni Trapattoni’s men.

No one can be more qualified than Marco Tardelli to under-stand the pressures on players in a major tournament — and the twists of fate that separate triumph from disaster.

Typically they feature dawn raids and search warrants; obscure provincial prosecutors with snappy wardrobes and an eye for publicity; pictures of sheepish young men emerging from police stations; extracts from mobile phone taps selectively leaked to the papers; condemnation and summary convictions; and then a five-year appeal process during which it emerges that everyone was doing it but the accused had the misfortune or the stupidity to be caught.