If you couldn’t watch the Europa League final between Sevilla and Roma, then you should count yourself fortunate. It was a nasty, bitter and forgettable excursion, blighted by fouls and time-wasting, that should make anyone connected with it ashamed, apart from the doughty English referee Anthony Taylor, who had a fairly good game. But for the players, 13 of whom were booked; the managers, especially José Mourinho, who had a shocker, shouting and cursing at all the officials; and Uefa itself, which did nothing to protect Taylor from being abused by a foul-mouthed mob who hurled a chair at him as he prepared to leave with his family from Budapest airport.

It is blindingly obvious that players and managers behaving like monsters to each other and to officials encourages thugs in the crowd to ape them. How to stop this shameful show? The suited nonentities of organisations like Uefa as well as national associations and the clubs themselves should come down harder. It is time for managers to be more seriously disciplined for their players’ bad behaviour if the game is ever going to wipe out unacceptable time-wasting, simulation and cheating. Then it falls to managers to tell their players to just cut it out or they will get banned themselves.

The poison of the Roma game mustn’t detract from the march of Manchester City to what could be their own European triumph this weekend in Istanbul – though anyone who thinks Inter will be a pushover should have a care: they won seven of their last eight Serie A games as well as picking up the Italian Cup. The extra-ordinary range of talent in Guardiola’s team, and the beauty of their play, has transformed all but the most blinkered fan’s expectations of the game.

How does Pep do it? Well, there’s pots of cash of course, not forgetting his tactical brilliance, acute managerial skills for each individual player as well as the team, hyper-intelligence, his reputation as a major player himself, and the outstanding support staff. But we shouldn’t forget his ruthlessness. He has been prepared to replace big-name players whoever they are (well, they are all stars), but is so respected that you don’t get a peep out of them if they’re dropped. That is one leak-free dressing room.

As for the Ashes, there’s still one big headache, and that’s skipper Ben Stokes’s physical condition. Sometimes the poor bloke can barely walk. It will be interesting to see how many overs he bowls in the series: not much more than 50, I bet. Talking of wagers, I would put serious money on Marnus Labuschagne, Glamorgan’s God-fearing, gum-chewing number three, to be Australia’s top scorer.

What this series should decide is whether the hyper-aggressive ‘Bazball’ is too good to be true. Messrs Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood will put on a show of force it hasn’t previously had to contend with. That battle might not be decisive: the real drama could be seeing who comes out on top between England’s now somewhat venerable attack, led by James Anderson and Stuart Broad, and Australia’s highly competitive batting line-up.

The blindness to historical perspective that affects football seems to be happening in other sports. An otherwise perfectly watchable BBC2 series, Gods of Tennis, ignores the old greats and comes out with some piffle about the likes of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe being the first tennis celebrities. The ‘Four Musketeers’, Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet, René Lacoste and Jacques Brugnon – who helped France win six successive Davis Cups between 1928-33 – were revered by the French, and Britain’s Fred Perry was a massive celebrity, met by a huge crowd at Victoria Station and carried shoulder-high after returning from a tournament victory.