England 3 Cameroon 0 in the first of Sunday's last 16 Women's World Cup games, and shocking scenes "going out worldwide" as England manager Phil Neville put it.
Indeed, as Neville laid into Cameroon for their "behaviour", the global audience was treated to an act of hypocrisy unprecedented at this level.
Mr Neville, who as a pundit on Match of The Day 2 once said he'd have "two footed" Tomas Rosicky for an "exaggerated" disguise pass, told BBC that the ninety minutes just played "didn't feel like football", as he focussed at least three times on the "worldwide" aspect of the event, which Cameroon had disrespected "worldwide".
Mr Neville, who was once booked for diving while playing in a Merseyside derby for Everton against Liverpool broadcast to over 100 countries ("worldwide"), said he had no sympathy for the Indomitable Lionesses.
"They felt sorry for them in the end, we should have had a red card and a penalty as well", he continued, suggesting that Alexandra Takounda's late scythe on Steph Houghton didn't fall into the "good foul" category that he regularly cites in the pundit's chair/sofa.
Cameroon are likely to protest that their protests were just part of their ongoing tribute to previous men's World Cup tournaments, expanding on their Italia 90 references from the group games to capture more memorable moments throughout this knockout match. Just a few minutes into the game, left back Yvonne Leuko, an admirer of Neville the player while growing up watching Premier League games beamed into many a nation, produced an elbow into Nikita Parriss' face that was straight out of the Terry Fenwick-on-Diego Maradona Mexico 86 mould. There was then a brief sojourn back to Italia 90, when Augustine Ejangue gobbed on Toni Duggan's arm (although proof of intent was less obvious than Frank Rikjaard's on Rudi Voeller), before a small misunderstanding of the rules over England's second goal revived memories of that Zaire player who smashed a stationery ball down the other end of the pitch as Brazil prepared to take a free kick against them in 1974.
Cameroon are expected to admit that their boycott-threatening response to their disallowed goal at 2-0 in the second half was not, as some assumed, a parody of Kuwait's Prince-intervening actions in 1982 when an offside looking goal for France was given, but just a normal, human reaction to the nauseating and unwanted pedantry of VAR.
"I can't stand here and say 'everything's wonderful'", Mr Neville bleated on, and it's clear that everything has been far from wonderful in his life for some time, given the excess of moaning and fondness of foul play. Anyone who has seen Mr Neville in an Everton shirt, reducing former team mate Cristiano Ronaldo to tears with a ball-forgetting lunge from behind at Goodison Park in 2009, will testify to that.
And many millions all over the planet did.
A Fan of No Importance is a blog dedicated to the unqualified ramblings of a man who has been unsuccessfully trying to ditch football from his life for a number of years. No matter what they throw at him - murderous regimes funding clubs, the corrupt getting richer, Sam Matterface - he can’t walk away. So he writes bad things about these bad people to make himself feel better and pretend he has a conscience. Boycotting Qatar 2022 was disappointingly easy, almost devaluing the moral aspect.
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