So what do we know after two first leg Champion League semifinals?
   
Well, we know that if you go right at Manchester United you can take their midfield out of the game and force even the very best players onto the defensive. It helps if you have Deco and Messi and the threat of Eto'o up front.
  
 And we know, once again, that if you match Chelsea and Liverpool in a European semifinal you will get a great deal of effort, grit, efficiency and even a touch of real class…but you won't get a DVD that you will be able to retail under the title “How to Play Brilliant, Thrilling Football.” And to think that Arsenal was once taunted as “boring.”
   
But what we don't know is who will get to Moscow. Good.
   
All four of these semifinalists belong to the elite and the fact that not one of them has been reduced to a holding action in the second leg argues for just how good they are.
   
On paper you think that Chelsea and Manchester United should start checking out the hotels in the Russian capitol. But if you live and die for Liverpool or Barcelona you figure that all it will take next week is one little away goal to completely transform the second legs.
   
Barcelona, in fact, may have come out that Nou Camp encounter today in better shape than a 0-0 scoreline suggests. It was the Catalans who carried the fight all night long and when you consider that they have a relatively meaningless league game at Deportivo this weekend they might well travel to Old Trafford in better shape than their hosts. (Barca doesn't want to toss away Spanish League points, but it will take a monumental Real Madrid collapse for them to get back into the title hunt. Let's just figure that they take eleven guys to La Coruna on Saturday and save the real artillery for next Tuesday.)
   
United, which may well live to regret that penalty disaster, has a far different task ahead: They must approach Saturday's Chelsea game with dead seriousness. Sure, their goal difference is a hedge that may well still net them EPL title no matter what happens in the match of giants, but the United faithful will not come to Old Trafford at lunch time to watch the reserves… or to accept failure.
   
Manchester United has had such a brilliant year that I continue to believe that they will get to Moscow… but that path sure would have been easier had Ronaldo not believed that the goal was 30 yards wide. Given that early let off, Barcelona made United look too ordinary for far too long and only the consistent ability of the EPL team's defenders to recover in tight spaces saved Sir Alex Ferguson and Co. from real problems.
  
 I cannot say that I particularly look forward to another Chelsea-Liverpool game. For some reason, these two manage to make their Euro encounters look like English football of the 1980's: No midfielders need apply. Liverpool should have made things safe at Anfield and would have but for Fernando Torres' inability to lift the ball against Peter Cech when he was put in clean by Steven Gerrard.
   
The fact that Gerrard largely disappeared in the second half is hardly news -- he does that for England with stark regularity. But what was worse about the second 45 on Tuesday was that Liverpool did not seem to have either the ability or the ideas necessary to build an unbeatable lead.
   
Nobody will ever write Liverpool off in Europe, least of all me. I've seen them get to finals too often when logic argued that they should not be there.
   
Still, isn't that own goal a suggestion that the worm is about to turn? Certainly it seemed like a bit of karmic payback for all the times decisions have slid the Merseysiders’ way.

That leaves Chelsea, hardly the prettiest lady at the prom, and not exactly practioners of the beautiful game. All they need to do is play it tight and smart next Wednesday.
   
If they do that, one question remains: Will there be a luxury box big enough to house Roman Abramovich’s posse in Russia?