Now let the serious business commence
You couldn't quite say the same about the domestic game, of course, but the start of the new eircom League campaign and the launch of the Setanta Cup add to the overall mood of rising footie fever in this part of the world.
With the Premiership title already en route to Stamford Bridge, barring a Devon Loch-style collapse, Chelsea's bid for European glory holds the most fascination.
Yesterday's quarter-final draw will have given rise to mixed feelings for Jose Mourinho, doubtless a strange sensation for a manager who seems to have distinct modes of temperature control super cool and super hot.
Either Eindhoven or Lyon free-scoring though the latter may be would have offered Chelsea the prospect of a safer passage through to the semi-finals. But although Bayern can be formidable, they are less proficient in the art of fluent, incisive, one-touch passing with which Barcelona frequently bewildered Chelsea in the last round.
On the other hand, Mourinho will be relieved to have avoided either of the Milanese sides, but especially AC Milan, who almost effortlessly controlled the two legs of their tie against Manchester United. From the veteran Cafu to the youthful Kaka, they seem to hold all the aces, making their derby quarter-final against Inter the pick of the bunch. The impressive Adriano notwithstanding it's hard to see Inter having enough about them to stop Carlo Ancelotti's apparently flawless side.
Similarly, if Liverpool are to feature in next year's Champions' League, you suspect that tomorrow's Merseyside derby will prove more decisive than their quarter-final against Juventus. The era of the galacticos may be coming to an end at Real Madrid, but a team which can still restrict the likes of Raul, Ronaldo, Figo and Zidane to just one goal over 210 minutes as Juve did in the last round should prove too tough a nut to crack for a bafflingly inconsistent Liverpool.
Whatever about proceedings on the pitch, the very fact of the tie taking place carries enormous symbolic significance. The last time these two teams met was in a European Cup final in 1985, when mere football was rendered entirely irrelevant by the horror of Heysel and the 39 deaths.
At a time when people tend to get a little too hysterical about the supposed coarsening of the game when all they're usually referring to are some wild managerial words, the black art of diving or the occasional flare-up on the field of play the meeting of Liverpool and Juve, in the 20th anniversary year of that shameful night, should act as a sobering reminder of just how awful the bad old days really were.
Football has still to grapple with serious issues not least the sickening resurgence of racism but the quietly dignified words of Liverpool Chief Executive Rick Parry about the special relationship between Liverpool and Juventus, made immediately after yesterday's draw, suggests the lessons of history have been well learnt. One hopes that both sets of supporters will surround the tie with an enlightened passion based on mutual respect and, indeed, after Hillsborough shared trauma. As an opportunity to show that football can heal as well as divide, the game is high stakes in more ways than one.
Thoughts of what was once an embedded sub-culture of football violence which saw English clubs banned from Europe also serve to remind us that we have been uncommonly lucky in this country that almost precisely the opposite phenomenon has taken a pretty firm hold, at least where Irish fans travelling abroad are concerned. The Green Army charming the locals on foreign soil may almost be a dull cliché by now but we should never lose sight of how depressing the alternative would be.
Occasional outbreaks of serious hostility at League of Ireland grounds mean that nothing can ever be taken for granted, but with the game in Tel Aviv just a week away, it's nice to be able to focus on football while trusting that the fans will do nothing to shock their hosts except with their apparently limitless alcohol capacity.
In which context, your correspondent has been moved to recall the most memorably pithy slogan I've ever witnessed in a football ground. The occasion was the 1982 World Cup finals game between Scotland and the then USSR in Spain, when the Tartan Army, massed behind one of the goals, raised a huge banner which purported to sum up the culture clash as follows: 'Alcoholism V Communism'.
It says something about how the world has changed that now there are probably more communists in Scotland than in Russia and certainly more alcoholics in Russia than in Scotland.
Anyway, never one to resist the lure of a painfully bad pun, I've been thinking that the trip to Israel presents the opportunity for a variation on that theme.
Yes, I can see it now: the camera pans around the stadium in Tel Aviv just before kick-off and a massive banner is raised by the Green Army.
It reads: 'Homebrew V Hebrew'.
(Awards red card to self, leaves page with head shamefully bowed).
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