When the most captivating club competition in the world, the European Champions' League, is compared to coffee without the caffeine punch you realise it is time to overhaul the vending machine.
Johan Cruyff, whose boots talked so eloquently, summed up the feelings of many about this season's revamped competition when he described it as 'decaffeinated'.
What a damning depiction of a tournament which is proving weekly that quantity does not always mean quality.
The decaf is being served up by UEFA officials who, in the face of Super League overtures from powerful promoters, decided to expand the European Champions' League from 24 teams to 32, ditch the European Cup-Winners' Cup and impose a formula on the UEFA Cup that puts a new spin on the term 'lucky loser'.
UEFA then had a fire sale of the TV rights, resulting in a glut of televised games which even the most ardent football lover-cum-couch potato cannot consume.
In the space of three days last week there was an astonishing 64 European matches broadcast live - overkill or what? The very title Champions' League is so misleading that it breaches advertising standards. Okay, your Manchester Uniteds and Barcelonas deserve their places but it is stretching the imagination a bit to describe all four German teams - Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Hertha Berlin and Bayer Leverkusen - as 'champions'.
Cruyff has not been the only one to call for a radical rethink. David O'Leary, the Leeds boss, has belittled the structure of the UEFA Cup which features his side. European Champions' League no-hopers were pitched into the UEFA Cup and they will be joined by the teams who fail to progress to the final stages of the main event.