European Champions League set for fairytale finish

Few sports attract a higher dollar investment than club soccer, its ancestral home is in Europe and the trophy every club most desires is the Champions League.

Therefore it figures that clubs invest fortunes in seeking to win it.

So when the biggest of spenders lose out to the most unlikely of victors, it's hard not to see the romance.

In recent years, the competition has been all about one team and one player.

Real Madrid has won four of the last five while its talisman Cristiano Ronaldo had claimed a fifth winner's medal when at Manchester United.

At the end of last season, the Portuguese superstar transferred to Juventus for 100 million Euros.

The total value of the Ajax side that knocked the Italians out in the quarter-final was less than half that - four of them (Joel Veltman, Matthijs de Ligt, Noussair Mazraoui and Donny van den Beek) cost nothing at all having come through the Dutch club's youth academy.

Shares in Juventus, which had won the last seven Italian league titles, plunged by as much as a quarter in value after the loss as shares in the Amsterdam club surged to a record high.

As if that wasn't romantic enough, Ajax had beaten Real Madrid in the previous round - winning 4-1 in the Santiago Bernabeu.

On Wednesday morning (Tastime), Ajax, who won the competition three times in a row in the early 70s inspired by Johann Cruyff, will play their first semi-final in 22 years against another team basking in the afterglow of a victory for wonder over wealth.

The Manchester City team that Tottenham knocked out after a stunning second leg goal-fest is managed by Pep Guardiola who had spent the most money of any manager in football history in getting to that stage.

Eight years after his Barcelona dream team outclassed Manchester United at Wembley, Guardiola had invested $1.45 billion in pursuit of another European crown.

This included $110 million on Riyad Mahrez, Aymeric Laporte ($103m), Bernardo Silva ($78m), Kyle Walker ($82m), Benjamin Mendy ($90m), John Stones ($86m) and $63m on scarily-tattooed Brazilian goalkeeper Ederson.

But they lost to Walker's old team Spurs despite the Londoners losing World Cup golden boot winner Harry Kane in the first leg and having only played in one previous semi-final some 57 years ago.

While one semi-final may represent the romance, the other is all ruthlessness.

Barcelona and Liverpool have each won the tournament five times - Barcelona as recently as 2015 while Liverpool were last year's runners-up.

The Catalans' talisman Lionel Messi has never had to wait more than four years between European titles and remains at the peak of his powers, scoring twice in the second-leg win over Manchester United.

Liverpool meanwhile may have cruised past Porto in the quarter-final but had accounted for another five-time winner Bayern Munich in the previous round.

At the same stage that Jurgen Klopp's men were winning their away leg 3-1, Manchester United were doing exactly the same thing to knock out Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain containing the world's most expensive signing, Neymar (222 million Euro).

Since 2013, the two major European club competitions have been dominated by Spanish clubs. All five Champions League titles and four of the five Europa Leagues have been accompanied by the familiar red and yellow flag.

Barcelona remain favourites to continue that run in a Champions League final four devoid of Italian, Germany or French representation.

Meanwhile, English clubs make up half the eight semi-finalists with the country's traditional big six all making it through to at least the quarter-final stages while also establishing a 17-point lead over 14 Premier League also-rans.

Whoever wins the Champions League, it is guaranteed a Spanish flavour with the final being played at Atletico Madrid's home ground the Wanda Metropolitano.

In contrast, the Europa League showpiece continues to stretch the boundaries of the host continent by being played in the Azerbaijan capital Baku a year after the Champions League decider was dispatched out to Ukraine's capital Kiev.

Still, if Australia is allowed to enter Eurovision, anything is geographically possible.

Barcelona's Camp Nou will host the competition's most probable winner on Thursday morning but it will be tomorrow's match at the stadium formerly known as White Hart Lane where the real fairytale will be told.

Expect a few more of the tears shed by Tottenham's two-goal hero Son Heung-min when told by a German TV reporter that his yellow card against Man City would keep him out of the game.