The Warm-Up: Eric Cantona. Eric Cantona. Eric Cantona. Eric Cantona.

Eric Cantona. Eric Cantona. Eric Cantona.

At what point did you stop and realise there will probably never be a greater man to play football than Eric Cantona? Or a greater man to talk about football than Eric Cantona? Or a greater man than Eric Cantona?

It must have happened at some point, even if he does occasionally post some weird egg-based content and you wonder what he’s doing. But then again he’s earned the right to do that sort of thing, because he’s Eric Cantona.

All of this is of course preamble to once again watching his speech from the Champions League draw at which he was given some award or other, and asked for a few words. And boy did he give a few words.

Eric Cantona. Try to make sense of it if you like, to work out if there’s any hidden meaning to the words, or any not so hidden meaning. But most of all just enjoy the fact that a man, when invited to offer some thanks and platitudes at an awards ceremony, stood up with his big beard, crumpled shirt and flat cap – presumably ignoring the many people who will have said at some stage “And you’re wearing…that?” – and said what he said.

It was his finest performance since those Kronenburg adverts.

Obivously they played second fiddle to Eric, but elsewhere at the Champions League draw there was, well, the Champions League draw, which saw Manchester City paired with Shakhtar Donetsk for the billionth time, Liverpool get Napoli, Tottenham will face Bayern while Chelsea are up against Ajax, among others.

Also, the whole thing wouldn’t be complete without a strong round of back-slapping, so UEFA handed out some shiny gongs, specifically to Lucy Bronze and Virgil van Dijk, named women’s and men’s players of the year respectively. Bronze edged out Lyon teammates Ada Hegerberg and Amandine Henry to the top prize, but wasn’t there to collect it as she was appearing in Phil Neville’s circus-like defence for England as they drew 3-3 with Belgium. However, she did say:

There were presumably the usual huffers on the internet who simply couldn’t believe that neither Leo Messi nor Cristiano Ronaldo were honoured yet another time, but let’s leave them to sweating in their parents’ basement for a little while longer.

Now some terrible news. You’ll probably remember that a few months ago Luis Enrique stepped aside from his position as Spain manager to care for his daughter, who was suffering from bone cancer. On Thursday evening Enrique announced that Xana, aged nine, had died.

His statement read:

We here at the Warm-Up are both apolitical and areligious, so we make no comment on and do not judge whether the Legia Warsaw fans who brought a giant picture of Pope John Paul II into their game against Rangers on Thursday were being grossly offensive or not.

What we will comment on is a) the stratsopheric levels of trolling that such an act falls into, and b) the chutzpah of getting that thing past security. Whatever your beliefs, you simply have to say that’s magnificent.

Hats off to the DFB (the German FA) for recognising that comments made by Schalke president Clemens Tonnies – in which he said more power stations should be built in Africa so “the Africans would stop cutting down trees and produce babies when it is dark” – were racist. “The phrase was deemed by media as being racist,” the DFB’s ethics commission said. “This is rightly so.”

So there will be some action taken against Tonnies by the DFB then? Well, actually, no, as it turns out. Good. Well done everyone. A successful day at work.

It’s a very happy birthday to Pavel Nedved, 47 today and here he is in the 2003 Champions League final, effectively putting Juventus into the final (where they would lose to Milan) before getting a booking that meant he was suspended from that final.

Juan Mata talks to ESPN’s Rob Dawson and continues to prove that he is one of the finest eggs in football.

A big big big big big weekend of football, football, football. There’s too much to really mention here but there’s the north London derby, there’s the Old Firm derby, there’s Juventus v Napoli, there’s Lazio v Roma – AND MORE. All the good football stuff.