Extreme competence, rooted in state-backed certainty and wealth, has left panic-stricken rivals in their wake again
Sport tends to move towards perfection: cleaner lines, starker numbers, greater certainties. It is a process that football, with its deep variables, its notes of chaos and inspiration, has been surprisingly good at resisting, At least, it has until now.
When the players of Manchester City and Chelsea walk out at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday afternoon there will be the usual sense of event-glamour: the whooshing TV graphics, the anchorman urgency, the feeling of something planetary scale in train.
