However you get a kick out of football, certain kicks deserve to be cherished

After 84 minutes and 39 seconds of Liverpool’s win at Crystal Palace on Sunday, Diogo Jota ran on to the ball, chested it, miskicked it, planted his leg into the path of Vicente Guaita and went down. Three seconds of action which Kevin Friend apparently watched 17 times before deciding to give a penalty.

Those three seconds were of course repeated and analysed by Sky Sports, and by Sky Sports News, by Match Of the Day and all over social media – the moment has been viewed almost 400,000 times on Sky Sports’ Twitter from just after the game. If you add all the posts, fan pages and every account that uploaded it to every platform, it amounts to millions of us repeatedly watching a man sliding into another man and falling on the ground.

“An absolutely disgraceful decision” was Alan Shearer’s verdict. “Can you tell I’m angry?” He continued. “It’s a nonsense,” said Glenn Hoddle. “An absolute nonsense.” Neil Warnock added an agenda to proceedings: “They get away with murder, the top clubs.” Mark Clattenburg and Keith Hackett used their national newspaper columns to talk about it. Phone-ins, YouTube channels, podcasts devoting hours to this moment.

By contrast, the three preceding seconds of the match were a thing of total beauty. Trent Alexander-Arnold intercepted the ball, and played a raking, arrow-like 50-yard pass into Jota’s path. It was such an exceptional piece of skill, to decide in a split second to attempt it, to execute the perfect technique – to just kick it so absolutely perfectly.

And this highlights the absurdity of how we consume football – and how little time we spend talking about the bit where players kick the ball, which ultimately feels like quite an important part of the whole affair. Far be it from me to