Rio [Ferdinand] DM’d me after the tournament. He’d said I was the weak link, and that Croatia should be targeting me.

‘This is a great day for us. Let us not spoil it by saying the wrong thing, by promoting a culture of revenge, or by failing to treat the former president with respect.’

And mid-way through the channel met / Conflicting tides that foam and fret, / And high their mingled billows jet, / As spears, that, in the battle set, / Spring upward as they break.

more leper-trees pitted, rownsepykèd out of nature, cut off in their sap-rising.