It was the No. 8 who first caught the eye. He was tall, languid, just on the border between rangy and ungainly. It was not the way he moved, so much, but the way he did not. In the middle of all the bustle and hurry, he was unusually still. He did not sprint. He did not dash. He did not even run, not really. He strolled. He meandered. He moseyed.
He was playing in midfield, but he did not look much like a central midfielder. There are, in modern soccer, precisely three acceptable profiles of central midfielder: slight and inventive; dynamic and industrious; physically imposing.