There’s a reason you were never allowed to eat blue Smarties.In the not so distant past, an animated television series called ‘The Wild Thornberrys’ aired on Nickelodeon, and though it’s final episode hit our screens in 2004, but we’ll always remember one particular character: Donnie Thornberry, the rabid child who looked like he was loaded on too many food colourants and sweets. He’d dart around, make inaudible noises and generally make a nuisance of himself. Oleksandr Zinchenko is Donnie Thornberry.It only occurred to us when a recent video emerged of the Ukrainian bouncing around a television studio following his country’s qualification for Euro 2020 that we were staring in the face of one of our old television regulars.

Born in 2000, Phil Foden might not be old enough to remember the Thornberrys in action. However, what he can appreciate is the detrimental effects of a hyperactive child being let into the family sweet drawer…