In the end he overstayed his welcome by a year, maybe two. Had Michael Schumacher chosen to retire at the end of 2004, with a seventh world title round his neck, he would not have left the world with the memory of that creepy expression of bogus innocence as he attempted to explain away his inexcusable behaviour during the final qualifying session at Monaco in May of this year.

John Terry had already declined to talk about the sudden explosion of acrimony surrounding the departure of William Gallas — ”I’ll answer those questions back at Chelsea,” he said — when his response to an entirely different enquiry during his press conference in Skopje this week gave an insight into the latest rumpus involving his club.

When Joe Cole shook hands with Shaka Hislop before the kick-off in Nuremberg on Thursday he thought back to the time, getting on for a decade ago, when they were teammates at Upton Park and the Trinidad & Tobago goalkeeper, already an experienced professional, helped to ease the English prodigy’s youthful anxieties.

After shaking hands with Frank Rijkaard and commiserating with his own weary players, Jose Mourinho blew kisses to the crowd as he disappeared down the tunnel, saying farewell to Europe until the next campaign. In the VIP box, Roman Abramovich made a show of clapping along with Barcelona’s victory hymn.

Conceived in confusion and executed in haste, Britain’s Millennium Dome turned out to be a £750-million symbol of the vanity of leaders who wanted to put on a big show without having to bother their heads about the little matter of substance. The new Wembley Stadium has a sense of purpose the Dome never had.

Once upon a time grand prix racing stood for glamour, risk and thrills. Its heroes were men of courage and style who drove into the mouth of danger without flinching. No one knew or cared how much they were paid. Their fans were happy to sit in long queues on their way to the circuit. That is no longer the case.

As he stared at his ball, perhaps Tiger Woods was already thinking that the game was up. There it sat, under a gorse bush. Then something happened that put any notions of sporting failure or success into perspective. A moment that chilled the blood, a blunt reminder that this ceremony was indeed part of the wider world.

You have to wonder whether it was merely by coincidence that Jose Mourinho expressed his lack of interest in Wayne Rooney’s future exactly 24 hours after the teenager had occupied no fewer than 13 pages of Sunday’s News of the World. Not that Rooney had done anything wrong to earn his prominence.