El Gasico? El Cashico? But Man City v PSG is worth getting excited for

So what takes precedence here: the football stuff, or the other stuff? Obviously you know about the other stuff. Paris Saint-Germain v Manchester City in the Champions League semi-final has already more than its fair share of alternative monikers. El Gasico. El Cashico. The Sportswashing Derby. Gulf War Three. A proxy battle on hybrid grass; a clash of new money and even newer money; Qatar v Abu Dhabi; the diseased nadir of the modern game; a big night for Kyle Walker.

It is, of course, all of these things and less. The meeting of European football’s two great petrocarbon empires feels ostensibly like a moment for savage lament: to mourn football’s slow capitulation to capital and disdain for human rights, to curse the subversion of the game we all love to forces well beyond our control. Even so, this is a course of action that only really makes sense until about 7.59pm on Wednesday night, at which point all moral resistance feels queerly obsolescent. This fixture is an utter disgrace and I object to it in the strongest possible terms. Peep! Right: come on Neymar, get stuck in, son.

As the old saying almost has it: when life gives you climate change, grow lemons. This is, after all, the great paradox of the contemporary Champions League: the better it gets, the harder it becomes to defend it. And so perhaps it is possible to register our distaste at the circumstances by which the spectacle has come about, while also feeling obscenely excited about the spectacle itself. Because make no mistake: this is a game worth getting excited about.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of this encounter is the way in which it throws together two clubs who for all their extravagant spending, their emotional investment, their naked yearning, have never been able to harness the prize that matters most to them. Combined transfer spending: roughly £3bn. Combined Champions League titles: zero. There’s a lesson in there: one that speaks to the intensely capricious nature of this competition, its preference for old money and old certainties, a legacy cartel almost as exclusive as anything Europe’s billionaire owners could dream up on their own.

Consider the recent roll-call of winners: a couple of Bayern Munichs, a quartet of Real Madrids, a Liverpool and a Barcelona. Consider, too, that Roman Abramovich has been hurling pieces of his soul at this competition for the best part of two decades, and to date his only triumph has come courtesy of a penalty shootout in 2012. Consider that Roberto Di Matteo won the Champions League more recently than Pep Guardiola, that the combined talents of David Silva, Sergio Agüero, Vincent Kompany and Kevin De Bruyne have played in fewer finals than Harry Winks.