Is this how the end of the Berlin Wall felt? Readers who didn’t grow up in 1990s Britain cannot understand the psychic impact of seeing Manchester United in its present state. As an emancipated people blink into the new dawn, skip hand-in-hand through the meadows, and build up the confidence to talk to the foreign press about their long ordeal, it is time to reflect, not gloat.

What life lessons can be taken from the fall of United?

Above all, the danger of striving. In 2016, United finished a non-disastrous fifth in the Premier League and won a serious if not top-tier cup. It then changed coach in pursuit of the grander prizes that it had grown used to under Sir Alex Ferguson. In 2017, the team came sixth and clinched another round of respectable silverware. A managerial change arrived the following year. In 2021: second. Runner-up in a European final. A new man took over before the calendar year was out.