Watching live as Haaland, Bellingham and Mbappé fluffed their lines was exhilarating | Barney Ronay

Without meaning to sound like some kind of best-life-living Instagram douchebag, on Wednesday I had a ham sandwich in Madrid for breakfast, then a salami baguette in Paris for lunch.

Mainly the two games were confirmation that for all its failings, the sense of an industry that is now overripe, stretched thin by greed and power, the product at the centre is still brilliant.

Perhaps when European football has finally eaten itself the last quarter-century will come to be seen as a version of Hollywood’s golden age, that founding beauty and energy still there, with just enough of the poison and greed and toxins to create a luminous, captivating, weirdly uncontrolled spectacle.

And yes he has to be tightly marked for this to happen, thereby “occupying” a central defender, as he was at the Bernabéu where his contribution resembled a footballing remake of Weekend at Bernie’s, Madrid’s centre-halves taking it in turns to march this sky blue cadaver about the pitch in a full body embrace.

There is an argument that City just aren’t a good fit for showing the best of Haaland as a footballer, given his one really outstanding quality is his mobility and running power.

The point I’m getting at here is that we were in many ways misled by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, by the unclosing hand of their brilliance, by the black swan event of two such players existing at the same time.