We should, we suppose, be grateful to Lucas Digne.
After spending two days complaining that the ball hitting a player’s hand should only really result in a punishment that equates to 75 per cent of a goal if it is really obviously deliberate or really obviously stupid, we didn’t really expect to have so perfect an example so soon as Nottingham Forest took a slender first-leg advantage in the all-English Europa League semi-final against Aston Villa.
And with the penalty not even given in real time owing to an incorrect belief the ball had gone out for a goal-kick, there was even some redemption for VAR after a shocking week in the Champions League.
Only Digne himself will truly know quite what he was thinking when he threw both his arms high above his head in response to Morgan Gibbs-White’s attempt – successful, replays would confirm – to keep the ball in play.
It didn’t look like a necessary movement to help propel him towards the ball. Nor did a working theory that he was trying to appeal for the goal-kick appear to be borne out by the slow-mo evidence.
It really did just look like something of a brainfart. And a potentially costly one for a Villa side who are already not the first and almost certainly won’t be the last to discover the new-look Europa League is a fairly easy old game until you come up against another English team.
With Crystal Palace 3-1 winners at Shakhtar Donetsk in the first leg of their Conference semi-final tonight, it does look like we really could be on for a second straight season where the only English teams to be eliminated from the Thursday night comps did so when coming up against other English teams.
The Premier League’s greatest strength lies not with the quality of its best teams, but the quality of the rest. The depth of the Premier League is a large part of the knockout struggles English teams face in the Champions League and the domination of the other competitions.
The problem with the Premier League for the rest of Europe isn’t that their best teams are noticeably better than the best Spain or Germany or France can offer. It’s that the 16th or 17th best teams in the Premier League are better than the third or fourth best anyone else can muster.
Digne’s moment of daftness and Chris Wood’s emphatic dispatch of the penalty elevated a game that followed a predictable path. Largely cagey, always tight, with occasional moments and flurries of quality from two teams who are weary after a long season but both in tidy form.
There was a remarkable save apiece from both keepers along the way. Emi Martinez contorting himself in the first half to somehow keep out Igor Jesus’ close-range effort and then prevent it getting away from him and sneaking over the line. Stefan Ortega, who has proved a very shrewd pick-up indeed for Forest, was then on hand to keep out an instinctive Ollie Watkins effort.
That one at first looked like it might have been more luck than judgement, but replays showed that, just like Digne, he’d moved his hands deliberately and decisively at the crucial moment.
Outside those moments, clear chances were at a premium in a game that was for the most part an arm-wrestle for control, with the midfields marshalled so expertly by Elliot Anderson and John McGinn largely cancelling each other out.
It always felt unlikely this East Midlands v West Midlands tussle would be decisively settled in the opening leg, and a narrow Forest win is probably the perfect outcome for placing the tie most perfectly on a knife-edge.
These are two proud clubs with huge history in European football. But so much of it is ancient. They’ve waited a long old time for this chance and must now wait one week more to find out who will be going to Istanbul.
One certainty is this: whoever emerges victorious at Villa Park in a week’s time will be a warm favourite against either Freiburg or Braga, whose own semi-final is similarly poised after a 2-1 home win for the Portuguese.
