The Warm-Up: Why Manchester United v Ajax still matters

On Monday evening the Warm-Up listened to a fierce radio debate about John Terry’s substitution the previous day.

And indeed the stage-managed 26th-minute switch aroused many points of view and talking points. Was it a well-earned treat for Terry and the appreciative fans inside Stamford Bridge? Was it a nauseating sideshow that cheapened Terry, the game and a complicit Sunderland team? Was it a worrying example of spot-fixing, every bit as corrosive as Wayne Shaw’s meat pie?

Three hours later, a suicide bomb in Manchester killed 22 people including an eight-year-old girl. John Terry doesn’t seem as important any more.

Real-world horrors put sport into perspective – especially when it comes to daily torrent of froth, hot takes and manufactured outrage.

Equally, it is patronising and short-sighted to tell the millions of fans who dedicate much of their lives following their teams this season that football doesn’t matter.

Manchester will be represented in Stockholm tonight by 20,000 fans who have spent thousands to support their team in a European final. They haven’t stopped caring about football.

Even if they now find themselves as the defiant, uncowed face of their city, their overriding concern during tonight’s 90 or 120 minutes will be the result.

If Monday’s tragedy cannot remove the game’s significance, it can at least remind us why we all fell in love with football.

Before the money, the 24/7 media saturation and the #WengerOut banners, football was fun. Fun to play, fun to watch, fun to pick a team and follow their fortunes. As we grow older it becomes an alternative universe, a diversion from our everyday lives – all the more appealing for its ultimate irrelevance. So it is a supreme shame when this fantasy world gets swamped by bitterness and rancour, where the only form of joy is Schadenfreude. OK, we still like Schadenfreude.

So whether you’re hoping for a completed set of European trophies for United and a back door into the Champions League, or an Ajax triumph and humiliating finale to Mourinho’s first season – enjoy tonight’s game.

About that whole reassessing football’s role in the world.. Real Madrid have just shelled out £39 million for a player WHO WAS BORN THIS CENTURY.

16-year-old Vinicius Junior sealed the move 10 days after making his senior debut for Flamengo and 8 days after signing a contract with the release clause that Real have just met.

The Warm-Up has never seen him play properly, but we’re guessing Real Madrid at least checked out one of those YouTube skills compilations before getting their wallet out, because he looks pretty tasty in those.

Vinicius will remain at Flamengo until 2019 when, aged 18, he will practically be past it.

So farewell Big Sam.

Look, if we were 62 and had just snagged a £2m bonus for keeping Crystal Palace in the Premier League, we would be more than tempted to announce our retirement from the living nightmare of unrelenting pressure and scrutiny that is football management.

That’s precisely what Sam Allardyce has done, just five months after signing a two-and-a-half-year contract with Palace.

When you put it like that, it makes perfect sense. And yet the consensus remains that Big Sam’s retirement is no more binding than Floyd Mayweather, Frank Sinatra or Jay-Z’s (now there’s a dinner party we’d like to be at).

And never let it be said the Warm-Up doesn’t do proper journalism. If Big Sam wants to do more travelling, how come he has put his villa, catchily named ‘Big Sam’s Villa’, up for sale. Eh? EH?

It’s not football, but it’s really quite something – in cycling’s Giro d’Italia, Tom Dumoulin saw his race lead slashed after he stopped for a roadside poo in the middle of yesterday’s stage.

Controversy raged over whether his rivals should have slowed the pace to wait for him.

Dumoulin’s post-stage analysis: “I needed to take a dump.”

If at any point in the next 12 months, Mauricio Pochettino complains about tiredness in his Tottenham squad, we’re going to recycle footage of his players on a post-season tour of Hong Kong.

Even the restorative properties of Tai Chi are undermined by the incessant buzzing of that bloody drone.

And there’s also U20 World Cup action live on Eurosport Player!