Cristian Romero escaped red for this foul on Callum Wilson (Picture: Shutterstock)
‘Good evening. The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football in the history of the game.’
Not Mark Chapman’s introductory remarks to Match of the Day’s coverage of Brentford v Aston Villa on Sunday night but dear old David Coleman’s disappointed-dad preamble before broadcasting footage of Italy’s clash with Chile at the 1962 World Cup, the infamous Battle of Santiago.
Because often, when you think you are seeing something for the first time, there is a lesson from history – or at least a revered BBC sports presenter – to prove the world has been here before.
More than 60 years ago Coleman was aghast at what we were about to see, intoning ‘the Chileans weren’t prepared to be reasonable, the Italians only used force, the result was a disaster for the World Cup’.
Italy’s Mario David is sent off against Chile in 1962 (Picture: Getty Images)
But while clickbait may not have been a term the great man was familiar with, they went ahead and ran the highlights anyway because then, like now, we are appalled by foul play, skulduggery and cheating, but still very much love to see it.
Which is why the abiding, largely happy memories we will take from Sunday won’t be Keane Lewis-Potter’s first goal in the Premier League or Ollie Watkins’ late winner.
Instead it will be Watkins’ finger-pointing celebration and the brief pantomime of s***housery it provoked – with a mass brawl in the goal net followed by an exhibition of pratfalls and swan dives by Neal Maupay and Emi Martinez which would have been better enacted in Covent Garden with the central characters wearing clown shoes and hitting each other around the head with a couple of ladders.
And of course we lapped it all up. Because, for all the tutting, for all the respect-the-ref campaigns and clampdowns on dissent, most of us enjoy a mass brawl just as much as a brilliant goal.
Aston Villa’s Emi Martinez clashes with Brentford’s Neal Maupay (Picture: Reuters)
And yet, sometimes, we allow the dark arts to define players, distracting from their other, better qualities.
Take former Real Madrid defenders Sergio Ramos and Pepe. One has lifted the World Cup, both have triumphed in the European Championship – deeds which set them apart from most English footballers – and both have won the Champions League multiple times.
And yet, their willingness to take one for the team – or take it upon themselves to negate the opposition’s main threat by fair means or foul – means they are often underappreciated or, worse still, simply dismissed as hatchetmen.
Usually, these ne’er-do-wells have been deployed by foreign powers, glimpsed by us doing their worst only in Champions League ties or on the international stage. But in Cristian Romero, the Premier League now has its own bogeyman.
Pepe and Sergio Ramos were hugely successful for Real Madrid (Picture: Getty Images)
Like Ramos and Martinez, the Argentine is handy enough at the actual footballing stuff to have won the World Cup but, in the unending narrative of the Premier League, the Tottenham man is often reduced to a one-dimensional character seemingly capable of nothing more than an X-rated challenge deserving of a red card every three weeks.
A man Gary Neville can only watch through his fingers while moaning ‘oh no, no, no’. Which is presumably how naive ingenue Gary reacted when he watched his team-mate Roy Keane crock Alfie Inge Haaland.
Romero is obviously an infuriating player, capable of cynicism and maddening acts of foul play but he is also great at defending and able to produce moments of real class.
Much like the game itself. It’s why we love it after all; darkness and shadow, sweetness and light.
Back to Sunday where, after flicking a match on the proverbial tinderbox at Brentford, the very likeable Watkins was asked whether, given what followed, ‘with hindsight, would you do that again?’. His indignant reply? ‘Yeah, I’d do it again.’
Same as it ever was and just as we’ve always wanted. Better not tell David Coleman.