Thank goodness the Champions League is not just for champions…

What began as an infatuation situation and at times became an unhealthy obsession is now a lifelong, never-ending love affair with the beautiful game.

Sir Bobby Robson said it better but how else could one justify the journeys by bus, boat, train and occasionally plane to far-flung cities for the chance to watch less than two hours of blood and thunder, thud and blunder on a football field?

A match-day, of course, is a lot more than the game. It’s meeting old friends again, having a laugh and, for me, revisiting the childhood home (St James’ Park as well as Newcastle upon Tyne). Alcohol is optional, which seems to put me in a minority of one among my peers. At least Dry January relieves the pressure to imbibe.

I’m writing this on the morning of Newcastle United’s crucial Champions League match against PSV Eindhoven as a Southern Rail service trundles towards London from Worthing. After a quick Tube to Kings Cross (fingers crossed) and a rendezvous with my youngest child, we’ll board an LNER that should take only 160 minutes to reach the John Dobson-designed Central Station.

That’s enough travelogue. Just consider what’s in prospect: a game against the best team in the Netherlands, the current champions, who look certain to retain the Eredivisie title, a team who have not lost away from their Philips-sponsored stadium since 1 March 2025.

A few years ago there was no likelihood of facing such European high-flyers, except in a pre-season kickabout. There’s no need to look back to the dark days, let’s just enjoy a proper match in Uefa’s premier club competition.

A draw would put us on 11 points and almost certainly extend this season’s campaign to the play-offs and at least two more games. A win would give us a realistic opportunity of qualifying for the Round of 16 knockout stage without the inconvenience of extra February fixtures.

Opinion is divided on the merits of the Swiss-format phase. Many fans yearn for the home-and-away system, when teams in eight groups of four played six games each to decide the best 16. Simplicity itself, though, with Uefa wanting to grow like Topsy, the former system was never going to be big enough.

Now 36 teams each play eight games in the first phase against eight opponents. No home-and-away ties until the play-offs but still plenty of reasons to question the integrity of the competition.

Seeding stinks, in my opinion. Especially when the usual suspects in the highest-ranked pot of nine are pitted against lesser teams in six of their first eight matches.

The Uefa Champions League is, to me, still the European Cup, that enormous glittering trophy held aloft by Billy McNeill when I was seven years old. McNeill was a giant, the Celtic team he captained the first British winners of a competition monopolised until then by Continental outfits.

Bobby Lennox rather than the dazzling Jimmy Johnstone was my hero in 1967. Quite why a pedestrian, perspiring, aspiring full-back would identify with Lennox, a supreme left-sided attacker, is one of life’s great mysteries. Think of it as my Billy Liar phase . . .

There was no seeding in the European Cup back then, though games were for a while arranged to avoid extreme travel distances. It was a straight knockout, unencumbered by the desire to guarantee privileged clubs even more privileges. Broadcasting rights and revenues were essentially irrelevant. As LP Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

The winning team qualified by right to compete in the next season’s tournament, as did the winners of the bigger European domestic leagues.

The Champions League was born in 1992, with domestic runners-up allowed from 1997 (Newcastle United, lest you forgot).

By 1999 the expansion included teams finishing third and fourth. Having changed the name from European Champions Cup to Champions League, Uefa remained and remains staunchly opposed to the more accurate title of Champions and Also-rans League.

Would you want a return to “the good old days”, when only the top team in each country could compete?

Probably not, if only because we would still be waiting to play Barcelona, Milan, Dortmund, PSG and the rest in what, despite all its faults, is a tournament not to be missed.

Having struck lucky in the Mags Member ballot, my daughter and I will be making the most of this opportunity tonight.