Format makes big clashes intriguing but irrelevant

Blockbuster matchups may seem important now but last season showed how misleading they became

- Jonathan Wilson

Liverpool v Real Madrid! Arsenal v Bayern! Chelsea v Napoli! Madrid v Manchester City! Bayern v Chelsea! Newcastle v Barcelona! Inter v Liverpool! PSG v Bayern! City v Napoli! Madrid v Juventus! Chelsea v Barcelona! It can't be denied that the Champions League draw threw up some ties that look like massive games.

These are games that have massive teams in them. They are happening in a massive competition. There will be famous players in famous kits in famous stadiums. They will play the Champions League theme tune. They will use the Champions League ball, taking its cues this season from the night sky and featuring hand-drawn zodiac signs in gold that symbolise heroic deeds and heavenly destiny. It will all look like something really important.

On 28 January there will be a massive, barely comprehensible night of 18 simultaneous games, games in which last season, as Giorgio Marchetti, Uefa's excitable deputy general secretary, breathlessly reported: "Almost every team changed their position on the table at least once."

And amid the blur of goals and flashing as-it-stands tables, perhaps nobody will realise that nothing that has gone before really matters all that much, that we have played 144 games to get a predictable last 24. Only then does the real business begin.