Those shafts of light, though, are not enough to lift the creeping feeling of ennui that is starting to pervade what is supposed to be the glitziest, most glamorous competition of all. The Champions League is designed to be a carnival to celebrate the very best and brightest. Instead, it increasingly has the air of a parade.

Since 2010, three teams — Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid — have taken almost two-thirds of the available semifinal spaces. The pattern holds in the quarterfinals, where five clubs account for more than half of the 40 slots over the past five years.

Much of the Continent has been locked out entirely: In the past five years, only eight countries have been represented in the quarterfinals, and two of those — Cyprus and Turkey — have sent just one team each. The Big Five leagues of England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, along with the Portuguese emissaries, Benfica and Porto, have provided the rest.

That the draw for this season’s round of 16 is so familiar is simply another manifestation of the trend. What made the Champions League’s predecessor, the European Cup, so special, what imbued it with a sense of occasion in the days when only a league’s champion qualified, was the rarity value of seeing the Continent’s greatest teams in direct competition.

That has now disappeared, seemingly for good. There are plenty who do not see it as a problem.

“It is fantastic,” Pep Guardiola, the Manchester City manager, said when asked, in December, if the dominance of the Big Five leagues had become a problem. He “prefers the best teams to be there,” he said, even if the best teams are always the same teams.

But there are signs that his view is hardly universal, that turning the one-night-only spectacular into an endless soap opera risks alienating audiences. When BT Sport, an upstart television network, paid more than $1 billion over three seasons to secure the Champions League rights for Britain in 2014, it did so in the belief that viewers would flock to its platform.