It is always worth remembering that on the day the very fabric of football threatened to be gutted, stripped and sold for parts by a money-hungry minority, Real Madrid drew nil-nil to then-15th-ranked Getafe in La Liga.
Arsenal needed a 97th-minute equaliser to scalp a point off relegation-stalked Fulham. Tottenham Hotspur drew 2-2 with Everton. And Juventus were still licking the wounds of ‘non-elite’ Atalanta pipping their Serie A berth from the day before.
Four of the 12 clubs who would come to comprise the so-called European Super League, the closed-shop breakaway competition for the “Best Clubs, Best Players, Every Week” as its website still proudly shouts in pink and blue accented print like an abandoned school project, could not even waltz into their brain child’s birthday without hysterically undermining it.
