Antony’s Manchester United debut was cinematic and apparently fearless

Dance like 70,000 people aren’t watching. Whatever Antony might go on to achieve from here on the fraught, treacherous, potholed path of becoming, for now, Manchester United’s second most expensive signing of all time, we’ll always have minutes 33 to 34 of his full debut, an interlude that was a kind of highlights reel on its own, me-time, a man intent on painting some part of this day a shade of Antony.

First he took possession on the right touchline and performed a kind of freestyle solo, shimmying both ways, waving his foot over the ball like a pavement magician hiding a ball under a cup. It was funny, gratuitous and kind of pointless. But also, not pointless. United would go on to win this game 3-1, helped by two fine second-half finishes from Marcus Rashford and some killer passing from central midfield.

But they were paddling at that stage. They might have gone behind. They needed something. How about a little show? And this is just Antony’s physical presence, the urge to see the game as a series of duels, a theatre of feint and flick and snap. If he succeeds he will succeed like this. It will be fun, and cinematic and apparently fearless. This is a useful quality anywhere. Nowhere more so than at Manchester United, a football club that has feasted on the ghosts of its own baroque past for the last decade.

A minute later Antony veered in from the same spot and scored, a fine goal made by the front three working together: Jadon Sancho to Rashford, who produced a nice little delay and a slid pass for for Antony, who opened his hips out, leaned to one side like a downhill skier taking a gate, and eased the ball into the far corner.

Finally there was the four-stage celebration, a piece of theatre in itself, or rather