West Ham and Eintracht Frankfurt set up a perfect Europa League semi-final - The Warm-Up

Looking forward to that glamorous Barcelona-Lyon semi-final, were you? You fool! This is the Europa League, and it cares not for your preconceptions, your assumptions, your desires to see Dembélé and Dembélé face-off Highlander style. Not when David Moyes is about at any rate.

West Ham looked a bit naive in the first leg. Squandering their home advantage, misreading the referee: these are the mistakes that English sides used to make in Europe, before the Champions League made group stage machines out of the biggest and best. But when it comes to England-in-Europe, West Ham are outsiders, newbies, wide-eyed innocents. For a start, it looks like they are trying to win the Europa League not as a secret path into the Champions League, but because they really want to win the thing. How cute!

And they're learning quickly. Their performance in last night's second leg was taut and professional. A lot of committed defending and a little bit of luck. Ride out the early siege, wait for the chances to come, and take them: one, two, three. They don't give out awards for well-worked set pieces, but in its own way, Pablo Fornals to Craig Dawson was just as unstoppable as any 30-yard piledriver.

The other two goals — 43' and 47' — served to prove the old cliché about the five minutes either side of half-time being a good time to score. Send Lyon into the break thinking "Hang on, we're in trouble here"; welcome them back by completely ruining the half-time pep talk. Make the home fans worry, then shut them up completely.

In a just world, the Europa League would begin with some kind of footballing Voight-Kampff test, and any side that secretly believes they really belong in the Champions League would be hunted down by Harrison Ford in a cool coat. This world plays to slightly different rules, most of the time, and up until last night it seemed that the trophy was destined to be folded into the broader story of How Xavi Rebuilt Barcelona.

But no! While West Ham were partying in Lyon, Eintracht Frankfurt were taking over Camp Nou, both on the pitch and in the stands. Xavi complained after the game that something had gone wrong somewhere, and wondered how a supposed home leg ended up sounding like a cup final at a neutral ground. It certainly scrambled the brains of his players, who forgot how to defend and then left their comeback just a minute too late. Sergio Busquets scored perhaps the finest goal of his career and it will be forgotten completely.

And while all that was happening, Rangers comfortably strolled and also barely squeaked past Braga. Both at the same time. As far as we could tell: it was quite noisy and we were watching three games at once. Hey, James Tavernier now has 79 goals for the club. In seven seasons. From right-back.

We've ended up with a beautiful final four. Three teams for which reaching this stage is the best thing to happen to them all season, and for which winning the thing would be the best thing in a generation. Obviously Atalanta would have fallen into that category as well, but instead we've got Randelion & Burdock Leipzig in as the cartoon villain, twirling their moustache and pushing their fizzy pop. But that only makes Rangers the neutrals' favourite, a state of affairs at once strange and very appropriate. Very Thursday night, in the best possible way. Very Europa League.

And you know what else is beautiful? The Europa Conference League. All of it. The whole entire thing. Sure, they named it after the world's most boring pear, and sure, they branded it with a bumptious shade of green. But it's worked. It's worked wonderfully well.

Look at the semi-finals. Over on one side, Leicester City against Roma. José Mourinho against his former subordinate; José Mourinho against himself; José Mourinho against the grinding passage of time. But luckily there's enough about the actual game to take the mind off the José Mourinho Show. We've written his name four times in this single paragraph. How does he do that?

But the real treat is the other one. Marseille against Feyenoord in the semi-finals of a European competition sounds good. It resonates, deep and sonorous; a reminder that being a big club doesn't just mean being one of the teams that won the ownership lottery or the advertising race. It sounds like something that has escaped through a wormhole from the late 1980s, in a very, very good way.

And that's the key, to both Europa League and Europa Conference League. While the same clubs take turns to have a crack at the late stages of the Champions League, here are clubs and fanbases on actual European adventures, in the strict sense. Journeys into the unfamiliar for them; encounters with the unfamiliar for everybody else.

It is a curious feature of the professional footballer: that a competition can be invented from nothing, sound a bit like a joke, and yet click so quickly. Sure, maybe Mourinho thinks he should be somewhere bigger and better. But even he cannot resist the siren song of a large silver flower holder. Deep within these utterly intense, pathologically driven athletes there flutters the avaricious heart of the magpie. Shiny. Gimme.

Look at PSV's André Ramalho, giving it the full Sammy Kuffour on the goalline after failing to block Leicester's winner. Or look at James Maddison. After scoring the equaliser against PSV, does the proper footballer thing: serious face, fist pump, clap to the crowd and teammates. All focus, all business. Then, after Ricardo Pereira's winner, he basically loses it. Onto the goalscorer's back, off again, windmilling his arms around and giggling. A trophy is a trophy is a trophy. And the Europa Conference League, against all our lazy assumptions, appears to be a trophy.

Goal of the evening goes to Rafael Santos Borré, partly because he catches it just lovely, but mostly for the celebration that follows, which we're reading as a gesture in the memory of the great Freddy Rincón.

Rest in peace.

You may be aware that West Ham's only European trophy to date — we're not counting the Intertoto Cup, because we never understood it — was the 1965 Cup Winners' Cup. You may even be aware that the final was played at Wembley, giving Bobby Moore crucial trophy lifting practice ahead of England's World Cup. But did you know that the game featured the most blatant handball goal of all time? Because until we got to 1:33 of the clip below, we had no idea. It gets ruled out, which is just as well in terms of the integrity of the game but a real shame from a comedy point of view.

If you've got a Nottingham Forest fan in your life, or even just in your Twitter feed, then you've noticed the last few months have been a bit odd. Happiness, even giddiness, but tempered at all times with a kind of cringing before the footballing gods. Sorry to be so pleased. Trying not to jinx it. Fingers crossed. It's the hope that gets you. Don't let it all go wrong again.

The man at the heart of all this trembling, fragile joy is Steve Cooper, who took over as manager in September and has been driving the club towards the automatic promotion places. And he, at least, seems calm about the whole turnaround. Adam Bate has an excellent exclusive interview over at Sky Sports, in which Cooper points to his background in youth coaching as crucial in Forest's transformation:

"I have been coaching professionally for 20 years now and most of that has been in youth development where you are drumming that into young players that they need to take the ball in difficult positions when they are under pressure. You want them to be free, to be creative, to express themselves, to play with team-mates, all these sorts of things. That is my belief. All we are really trying to do now is to do it at a more senior level."

It's Hot Cross Bun day in the UK, and to celebrate we've got a full list of Championship fixtures. The festivities begin with Nottingham Forest away to Luton at half-noon, and ends at 8pm with Fulham at Derby. Elsewhere, both Milan clubs are in action: Inter away to Spezia and AC Milan at home to Genoa. And over in Spain, Real Sociedad play Real Betis. And Wrexham play Solihull Moors in the National League. And that really is quite a lot of football to be getting on with.