When David Lacey closed the lid of his laptop at the end of the 2002 World Cup final in Yokohama, an era was ending. It was the last match of his 30-year run as the Guardian’s football correspondent, and he concluded his report on Brazil’s 2-0 victory over Germany with a paragraph that could not have been more typical.
“Presumably the Emperor of Japan was suitably impressed,” he wrote. “Brazil’s object had been all sublime and Germany’s defeat was widely regarded as a source of innocent merriment. It was not a bad way for Japan to start the rainy season.”
The half-hidden reference to The Mikado, WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s comic opera, was characteristic not just in the clue it gave to Lacey�…