During the last football World Cup I was sitting on Copacabana beach with Gordon Strachan talking about morality in football. It was a short conversation. “There is no morality in football,” said Gordon. This was the day after Luis Suárez of Uruguay bit, yes bit, the Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini. The peckish Uruguayan got a four-month ban for taking this on-pitch snack.

But Gordon’s point wasn’t a reference to whatever moral failing on Suárez’s part led to the biting incident. His point was that there wasn’t a club in the world who wouldn’t sign him up the very next day given half a chance. The only question would be whether they could afford him; no club would give a second thought to having a nascent cannibal on their payroll.