It will be, by some distance, the biggest transfer in football history. Not just because of the eye-watering £199 million fee Paris Saint-Germain must pay Barcelona, or the £515,000-a-week wages after tax, or even the vast commission sums sought by the player’s entourage, but because of what it represents: the fabulously gifted Neymar as the ultimate pawn in the geopolitical chess game that these days serves as a discomforting backdrop to elite sport.

It seems quaint to reflect how, less than a decade ago, we would talk of a club’s heightened ability to “sell shirts” on the back of a high-profile acquisition. Neymar can sell shirts all right, but he will also be expected, in figurative terms, to move mountains — not just for PSG