Real's Fernando Hierro and Mark Viduka battle for Spain and England (AlexLivesey/Allsport)

Now, with Arsenal and Leeds joining them in the Champions League quarter-final draw, and with Liverpool progressing to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup after their 2-0 win over Porto, it looks like English football is beginning to live up to its own high expectations.

But the best league in the world? The Spanish would choke on their rioja.

Real Madrid, Deportivo La Coruna and Valencia all qualified for the Champions League draw as group winners. Accordingly, those three teams, and in that order, make up the top three in Spain's Primera Division. All three English representatives went through as runners-up.

And two more Spanish clubs, Barcelona and CD Alaves, joined Liverpool and German side Kaiserslautern in the last four of the UEFA Cup.

When Real Madrid lifted the European Cup following their 3-0 win over Valencia in the Stade de France last May, the fact it was an all-Spanish final was dismissed by some critics as a fluke.

But Spanish teams have built on Real's glory and are now dominating European competition in the same way English teams did 20 years ago and the Italians did 10 years ago.

It can be no coincidence that Rivaldo, Figo and Raul, all challengers to Zinedine Zidane's position as the best player in the world, are playing in Spain. Even allowing for his dip in form, David Beckham is the only star playing in England fit to rub shoulders with such illustrious company.

So how do we explain the Spanish resurgence? According to Guillem Balague, La Liga expert for Sky Sports and football correspondent for newspaper El Mundo, it all started with a Dutchman - Johan Cruyff.

'Other Spanish teams looked at what Cruyff did at Barcelona at the start of the 1990s and copied his tactics and approach,' he explained. 'It transformed the game and allowed us to get to where we are now.

'At the moment, there's no better league than the Spanish league. It's been like that for two years now. It will change again but at the moment it is our time.

'La Liga is very competitive, one of four teams could win it. In England the title race is already over. Spanish football is about mixing skill with passion and tactics.'

Like English football, Spain's top flight is full of foreigners. But the difference, Balague adds, is that Spain sign imports while they are in their prime.

He said: 'There are probably more foreigners in Spain than in England. But we choose the right ones. We don't go to Norway or Sweden, we go to Brazil and Argentina, and because of the language, the cultural shock is less of a problem.'

United manager Alex Ferguson understands the problems faced by English teams in Europe. He said: 'I'm not underestimating the English teams but European football is a different type of football from our normal humdrum Premiership.

'And it's a grind. When we play Arsenal and Leeds it is sometimes a battle.'

But before the Spaniards get too full of themselves, a word of caution. Italy's Serie A clubs, who dominated Europe during the last decade, have failed to get any teams into the last eight of Europe's two competitions.

The respected Gazzetta Dello Sport commented recently: 'Rich, arrogant and incompetent. Italian clubs have failed organisationally, institutionally and as business concerns.'

National teach coach Giovanni Trapattoni added: 'It's not that we've suddenly got much worse. Rather, it's that the others have caught up on us.'