John Bruin

It washes away quite a lot of ills, but ills that we shouldn't forget.

I think it would be irresponsible to do that.

Yes, yes, I do.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, if that was an Algerian, he'd have been sent off for it, you know, and that's it.

So, yeah, Messi scores a hat-trick and stories of the treatment of the Iran team having to fly out of the US on the day of the game, that drops down the sidebar of shame or whatever, doesn't it?

You can't do that.

And in an era of VAR...

you know, that's a red card.

And therefore, we talk about Messi, we talk about record-breaking, we talk about World Cup legacy and stuff like that.

Messi knew he'd done it as well.

I don't know if he did it deliberately, but he knew that he committed the offence.

This is it.

Football, the brilliance of some of the football played at World Cups and the brilliance of the World Cup...

It was nasty.

It was nasty.

But, you know, he's a crotchety old man, isn't he?

That's the thing.

But he's also a brilliant footballer as well.

It was put to me that the sport washes itself, doesn't it?