In the meantime international football

In many ways this sense of deflation is a credit to the way the Premier League is sold and packaged. If not quite a reflection of its enduring tensions. It is worth being clear on this point. When the current round of 82 mixed and varied international friendlies has been played, Manchester City will still be miles clear of the field, the Premier League season still reduced to a wrangle to avoid 19th and 18th place. Serie A will still be the only major European league with anything resembling a title race.

In the meantime international football, so often dismissed – with some justification – as a drowned world of by-rote mediocrity, is entering one of its periods of sharpened interest. Many of these games may look enjoyably obscure – Gibraltar v Latvia anyone? – or a selection of carefully staged geopolitical oddities (I bring you: Madagascar v Kosovo at the Stade Jean Rolland). But there is also something more tangible in train, the first real spark of the World Cup fuse, a kind of base camp for Russia 2018.