At Loftus Road
Phil Jones was not even halfway through his day's work for Manchester United at Loftus Road when the latest lofty comparison landed on his head.
Everton's former Manchester United defender Phil Neville - tweeting in his guise as someone called @fizzer18 - announced that the 19-year-old had shown enough in a central midfield role in the 2-0 win to be placed in the same category as "a young Roy Keane."
Sir Alex Ferguson will greet this more favourably than Jones being likened to an old Roy Keane after Manchester United's manager had his ears singed by the most unflattering of personal verdicts from his one-time voice on the pitch in a searing morning newspaper interview.
Keane was a player and captain of unquestionable greatness, but he joins an ever-lengthening list as prominent figures within football grapple with the task of finding a pigeonhole for the prodigiously talented youngster Ferguson lifted from Blackburn Rovers for a bargain £16m in the summer.
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In 1924, Uruguay arrived as unknowns at the Olympic football tournament in Paris, took everyone apart on the way to winning the gold medal and changed football forever.
The enthusiasm they set off led to the birth of the World Cup six years later. And like so many significant events in football, it was not just because they won - it was because of the way they did it.
Contemporary accounts raved about them. Influential journalist Gabriel Hanot praised their "marvellous virtuosity in receiving the ball, controlling it and using it," and drew attention to their "beautiful football, elegant but at the same time varied, rapid, powerful, effective."
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This Sunday I will be on the microphone for the big south-coast derby between Portsmouth and Southampton in the Championship.
It's a game between two sides who it's fair to say are never on each other's Christmas card lists. It promises to be a very feisty affair indeed.
Both clubs' managers make interesting character studies. Nigel Adkins at Southampton is an eloquent and a youthful looking 40-something, who exudes charm.
His approach is all about the team with no room for individuals -- I imagine his sock drawer is as tidy as his tactics -- but he is as good at giving out inspirational titbits as he is at talking technical, and boy can he talk technical.
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