A new contender for the worst penalty of all time during Granada against Getafe - The Warm-Up

Europe's most exciting football league — that's La Liga; sorry, The Premier League — took several more dramatic twists last night. First Real Sociedad, who were last champions in 1982 and were heroic, heart-breaking runners-up in 2003, went three points clear at the top. Then Atlético Madrid dropped points thanks to a late Levante penalty, though Diego Simeone didn't see it: he'd been sent from the dugout ten minutes beforehand.

But none of that, fun though it was, could compare to one moment in Granada's game against Getafe. A penalty that didn't go in.

Our initial theory was that putting a penalty over the bar is football's most unforgivable crime. Then we remembered all that actual crimes, like match-fixing or doping programmes and more. And then the leg-breakers, those are bad too. Then we spent some time thinking about third kits, and it all collapsed.

So, a new theory: putting a penalty over the bar is football's most irritating crime. Sure, there are technically worse things that can happen on and near a football pitch. But few of them feel so pointless. Put a penalty anywhere within the frame of the goal and there's a decent chance the goalkeeper will already have dived the other way. Miss-hits go in. So go gentle side-footers. All a player has to do is give themselves a chance. All they have to do is exactly and precisely not this.

The playbook for these moments is a familiar one: jokes about the ball flying into space, hitting a satellite and/or Jeff Bezos, then coming down a week or so later. All good clean family fun. But watching this ball climb into the air, looking at that appalling, almost rugby-like angle, it feels like we owe every other vertical miss an apology. Come back, Chris Waddle. It could have been so much worse.

Granada's Luis Suárez — not that one, nor that one — immediately turned and blamed the pitch, and to be fair to him, it did look pretty cut up. Perhaps a mole popped up at precisely the wrong moment. A really big mole. The one out of Thunderbirds. And fair play to his coach as well, who decided not to watch. Probably the best decision anybody made all day.

Of course, this being La Liga, every dramatic moment is just setting up the next one. That ball sails up and away, and Getafe — 1-0 up, winless through 10 games — start to dream. Here it comes. The first three points of the season. The beginning of the fight back. Just the seven minutes of injury time to get through. Wait, seven?!

And in the last minute of the last minutes, in time added on because everybody was laughing at the penalty, Granada equalise. What goes up must always, always come down. Eventually.

Technically a tournament begins with the opening ceremony, in a charming flurry of flags and fireworks. Pedantically, it begins when the first games kick off and not a moment before. But football is a game played not just by 22 players on a field, but in the minds of everybody that's paying attention, and so a tournament really begins with the draw.

That's when we find out who is playing who, and when, and the list of teams becomes a schedule. That's when our imaginations start to work with the possibilities: easy game, hard game, should win, could win. One of that lot in the quarters, them or them in the semis. And maybe, if you're feeling spicy, a quick moment to think about the final.

This means Euro 2022 began yesterday! Hope you're enjoying it.

Hosts England against Northern Ireland looks like the most exciting occasion, being the closest thing to a local derby on offer, although Group A will probably be decided a few days beforehand when England play Norway. Meanwhile Group B promises to be a decent scrap for top spot, with serial winners Germany in with dark horses Spain.

Those two groups run into each other in the quarter finals, raising the tantalising prospect of England against Germany coming far too early for comfort. On the other side, France are lined up to face one of Sweden or the Netherlands in the last eight. This tournament is already great, and it doesn't start for months.

All structure is giving way. We are trapped at the swirling centre of a vast reality collapse event. One by one the bonds of comprehensibility are stretching and snapping and pinging away into the hungry vortex. Danny De Vito's turned up in Wrexham.

In the spirit of Halloween, here's Grimsby Town vs. Burnley from 2002, a match to strike fear into the hearts of defenders everywhere. Perhaps spooked by the mascot's very convincing witch costume, the two sides shared 11 goals. Also includes Grimsby's commentator — certainly our man of the match — referring to any neutral watching as "an independent", which is delightful.

There's a lot of good stuff in The Athletic's Black History Month series, and Abi Paterson's interview with Hope Powell and Kerry Davis — on the lack of diversity in England's women's set-up — is a good place to start.

Do PSG actually play every Friday, or does it just feel that way? They're definitely playing tonight, at home to Lille, though the defending champions aren't quite the team they were last season. Elsewhere, Nottingham Forest travel to QPR, and Hoffenheim host Hertha Berlin.