By 5am quite a crowd had gathered outside the Stade Gerland. When the ticket office opened, it took a mere two hours for Olympique Lyonnais to sell out the tickets for their Champions League quarterfinal against Porto on Wednesday. The lucky ones skipped off, clutching little rectangles of paper as if they were gold bullion.

Watching Nicolas Anelka witnessing another game thrown away as only Manchester City can, it is the blankness of his body language, the emptiness in his expression that really make you wonder what goes on in his head. It says something that people are still fascinated – after all, he has not given many clues in nearly 10 seasons as a professional.

Depending on who you listen to, Bryan Robson is either already the manager of Nigeria, will be soon enough, or it’ll never happen. This level of confusion demonstrates the problem with clarity in African football. Dozens of players are about to become embroiled in the biennial European club versus African country row.

Nobody in English football is as equipped to measure the explosive force of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink as the man with the unenviable job of fending off the fire every single day at training.