Originally published by Ace Magazine online. June 2014.

Holland playing against Mexico, perhaps one in which the purist and the hopeful could both savour the football that was surely to be placed before an awaiting world, or at least that cared about such matters and who weren’t enthralled by the arrival of Dolly Parton at Glastonbury or the more serious topics surrounding the battlegrounds that used to resemble Iraq and Syria and the tension that grumbles on between the European Union, Russia and the Ukraine.