World Cup Warm-Up: Is this the best World Cup in years already?

We’re calling it early: this is a brilliant World Cup. So far we’ve had a manager sacked a couple of days before his side’s first game, two late winners, a 5-0 and another utterly extraordinary performance from Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored a hat-trick in Portugal’s 3-3 draw with Spain, in what was a fairly extraordinary game.

One of the more amusing corners of social media since the game finished has been people falling over themselves not to give Ronaldo too much credit, lest they be caught praising a man who thinks quite highly of himself.

‘The first was a penalty, the second a mistake, the third a free-kick…’ goes the line of argument. Which is clearly silly, but might sort of hold a little bit of water if this was a one-off, rather than about the billionth time he’s done something like this.

Diego Costa with two and Nacho Hernandez with a fizzing half-volley got Spain’s goals, but surely the most remarkable aspect of their performance was the Kariusian error from David de Gea, previously thought of as the safest hands in the business, letting a relatively weak Ronaldo shot squirt through his grasp like a tricky bar of soap.

Maybe he had been distracted by the Julen Lopetegui saga, maybe the ball took a miniscule bobble, maybe this is the universe’s way of reminding us that everyone is fallible and we should take nothing for granted. Whatever is true, it all adds to the fun.

The official line is that football goes on for 90 minutes, which is why when something big happens outside that arbitrary period of time, it’s much more enjoyable. With apologies to Morocco’s Aziz Bouhaddouz, one of the few things better than a 95th minute winner is a 95th minute winner that’s also an own-goal.

That’s when Bouhaddouz, marking space at the near-post, inexplicably headed past his own keeper to snatch a point away from his team and send Iran into understandable paroxysms of joy.

Afterwards, Iran coach Carlos Queiroz was in fine form. “Superman is only in the cartoons,” he said. “Nobody is Superman. What can happen once in a while, is that a group of people when they are united, they can create super stories. We work together to create super results. Our attitude is to make the impossible, possible.”

The genuine question now is whether an utterly distraught Morocco team can recover from this: it doesn’t look good, since their next two games are against Spain and Portugal. But hey: this is the World Cup. No hope is yet lost.

Under normal circumstances, a game in which a dramatic 80th-minute winner is scored would be headline news, but given what else transpired, these are not normal circumstances. Still, hats off to Jose Gimenez for an absolute blunderbuss of a header to earn Uruguay a 1-0 win over Egypt, for whom Mo Salah could only watch from the bench, despite pre-match assurances that he’d be fit to start.

Afterwards, Uruguay manager Oscar Tabarez took on the role of a wise old sage in a fairytale, stopped by the hero of the story to offer some shrewd advice on how to navigate the world. “The paths to scoring a goal are infinite,” he said, “and they’re all valid.”

Meanwhile, the number of empty seats in the Ekaterinburg Arena – in the lower tiers, rather than the frankly terrifying temporary stands at either end – are the subject of an actual investigation by FIFA, so worried are they about appearances.

“We can confirm that the official attendance for the match between Egypt and Uruguay in Ekaterinburg is 27,015,” a Fifa spokesman said. “The Fifa World Cup stadium capacity is 33,061. The fact that the actual attendance is lower than the number of allocated tickets can be due to different factors, including ‘no shows’ on match day, which Fifa is currently investigating.”

Everyone loves Gareth Southgate. He’s charmed everyone, from the players to the media to (probably) a good lot of the fans. And the FA, it seems. “He’s empathetic, he’s articulate, he has high emotional intelligence and a really good understanding of connecting with the players and getting the best out of the players – and the staff,” said Dan Ashworth, the FA’s technical director. “I can’t tell you who would succeed Gareth Southgate but when it does happen let’s hope it is because he has done such a good job that he has been whisked off to Real Madrid.”

All of which is going to make the response, if/when England slink out of the tournament in underwhelming fashion, even more interesting.

It’s not so much Kevin De Bruyne’s brutal tackle on Adnan Januzaj that is troubling, more the way he just casually strolls off afterwards, without a care in the world.

Ryan Giggs: raconteur. Presumably any Welsh fans out there are thoroughly reassured by the charisma on display here.

On this World Cup day in 1986: Josimar scores a belter in Brazil’s 4-0 win over Poland.

Day three. The big one. In a month of solid football, it’s the one that stands out as a day of solid football. So prepare that buttock groove in the couch, because we start with France v Australia, then it’s Argentina v Iceland, followed by Peru v Denmark, finishing with Croatia v Nigeria. Will that do? Are you not entertained? You will be son, oh yes, you will be.