From the Messi playbook: Micky van de Ven’s goal gives Tottenham timely jolt

LONDON — Unless you are the sort of person who wants to stand on the streets of Pamplona and feel the snort of a raging bull on your face as it passes within an inch of your precious flesh and bone, opportunities for real-life thrills in the modern world are increasingly hard to come by.The dulling effects of relentless scrolling mean we now experience these primal charges through, for example, 10-second clips of a mechanical crusher squashing various household items into smithereens. They’re good, but they’re not real.A fascination with displays of destructive power is, to varying degrees, a trait we all possess — scientists say that we might be drawn to them because of the dopamine hit prompted by the feeling of awe.And now, to the goal.You’ve already seen it appear on your feed, reduced and repackaged into shareable content that you can post in your Whatsapp groups. A quite good centre-back scoring a very good goal against a quite mediocre team.However, for those present at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Tuesday night it was viscerally real. Watching Micky van de Ven with your own eyes, rampaging from one box to the other past scrambling defenders, before drilling a shot past the helpless goalkeeper was stop-you-in-your-tracks awesome.Though the game was already won, the timing could not have been better for both the Dutchman and his team.He had been at the centre of the storm surrounding this week’s Premier League crisis club since he and teammate Djed Spence appeared to ignore Thomas Frank’s attempt to get them to join him on a lap of appreciation in the aftermath of Saturday’s home defeat to Chelsea.Frank has since revealed that the pair had since come into his office “unprompted” and apologised for their actions. The Tottenham boss joked in the aftermath of the 4-0 win over FC Copenhagen that Van de Ven can keep walking past him if the defender is angry after a match if he follows it with a moment like this one.