“And here are the best bits from tonight’s 2-0 win.” All things considered the stadium announcer at Villa Park probably deserves some kind of civic heritage award for his fine work preserving the dry gallows humour of this part of the Midlands.
What was this occasion exactly? Ninety minutes of light cardio? A day to marvel, perhaps more than ever before, at the contrast in tone and staging between the basic product of club and international football? By the end this World Cup qualifier felt closer to a piece of mid-range pageantry, some kind of trooping, a march past, one of those tedious, formularised affairs where the whole point is plumage and horsery and shiny buttons, and where the only thing to say, in between drifting off into a revery on your own mortality is, yes, well, we do at least do these things very well.
