Romelu Lukaku watches from the margins as Chelsea dismantle Lille

Stamford Bridge was a crisp, clear, boisterous place at kick-off in this last-16 first leg, the air crackling with a comforting midweek energy under those low white lights. And for the next 90 minutes two things happened.

First up there was that unavoidable sense of wider turmoil. What a strange, fraught occasion this was for the world’s most guilelessly weaponised sport, another turn as the hot dog seller in the background of history, a bumbling tourist on the front line of world events.

At lunchtime Roman Abramovich’s name had been bandied about the houses of parliament, the British prime minister insisting (incorrectly, it was later withdrawn) that sanctions were already in operation against Chelsea’s owner. By late evening this had been translated through the lens of midweek football into a meeting of English and French champions in the Gazprom-sponsored Uefa Champions League, with an unavoidable sense of interlocking fingers entwined around this occasion.

In the middle of which, as ever, a game of football broke out. Geopolitical tensions may come and go. But we will always have neat, tactically astute Chelsea Champions League knockout victories. And from a certain angle this was almost a parody of the form: clean sheet, set-piece goal, N’Golo Kanté breakaway, good hustle, nice patterns, Thomas Tuchel on his feet having an ongoing, deeply personal argument with his disobedient invisible twin.

Chelsea were excellent in many ways, a team working in sync and offering by the end the clearest demonstration – in his absence – of what exactly is eating Romelu Lukaku. Tuchel lined up his team with seven essentially defensive outfield players here and a Pulisic-Ziyech-Havertz front three that did not so much scream goals as