On the eve of Euro 2016, the power brokers of European soccer assembled to mark the occasion. Mostly, they let the DJ do the talking.
The DJ is David Guetta, an international superstar you will not recognize, but whose music has been the unbearable soundtrack of bad patio bars and low-rent outlet malls for years now.
Guetta is responsible for Euro's "official" track – This One's For You – that will infect this tournament like an aural contagion and ruin many lives.
I assumed he was here at the introductory press conference to take responsibility for this crime against art, and ask forgiveness. Apparently not. In fact, he looked outrageously pleased with himself.
You will have heard that soccer's had some administrative trouble recently. Nothing serious. Just a little bit of widespread graft, corruption on a global scale, money laundering, dozens of arrests and scorching of bureaucratic earth.
UEFA – which stages the Euro – is currently without a president because the man in charge, Michel Platini, has been banned from the game as part of that larger scandal within the world governing body, FIFA.
Fair to say, there's a lot to talk about. And here were the sort of grey men to do it.
So, of course, the first canned question was lobbed up at Guetta. "How would you describe the passion people have for football?" the moderator wondered, while Guetta swivelled around in his chair delightedly.
Guetta seems like a nice, wealthy fellow, the sort we used to call Eurotrash. Reed thin. Long, lank hair. Odd, pan-continental accent. He has the mien of a Starbucks barista who is just a little too into fair-trade coffee and would like to talk to you about it until the sun collapses in on itself and life on this planet ends.
He went on for quite some time. My favourite line: "I have seen the passion in stadiums [meaningful pause] I also play stadiums!"
That is some unassailable logic right there.
No one understood what Guetta was going on about and made no effort to disguise that fact. Each of his verbal crescendos was greeted by a couple of hundred journalists with complete silence.
Alongside him sat legendary referee Pierluigi Collina, current head of UEFA officiating. Collina, an affable Italian, had the soft, panicked look of a man just realizing he's sat down on the subway beside a lunatic in mid-rave.
"You're not my usual crowd," Guetta said, a nervous edge creeping into his voice. "I would love you to have a glass of champagne. Maybe two glasses."
Guetta laughed hard at his own joke. No one else did. Don't offer us champagne if there's no champagne, pal.
You were starting to feel sorry for this poor weirdo. It was only just occurring to him that no one cared what he had to say. He'd only been invited to delay the real questions for as long as possible.
This was before they brought out the horrifying mascot of this event – a leering, hydrocephalic child named Super Victor – to upstage him.
I'm not sure if Guetta was meant to leave early, but when he popped up mid-presser and fairly sprinted off the stage, it felt like an escape.
Then the familiar piffle began. Whether it's FIFA or UEFA, it is amazing how little these people can say while filling so much airtime.
Most of it was left to the head of the organizing committee, a droning fossil named Jacques Lambert. He went on at excruciating length about administrative minutiae. Whenever he got a question he didn't like, he kicked it over to an aide.
His leading contribution: "We have considered every hypothesis possible."
All of them? This sounds quite expansive. Volcanoes? Alien invasions? Mole people?
When someone asked a double-barrelled question about security and Platini, Lambert fell to Guetta-esque joshing.
"Whether Michel is there or not, I don't think it will have any effect on terrorism," Lambert drawled.
A UEFA hack sitting in front of me – a young woman in the vaguely fascistic blue uniform suit of that organization – tittered. She was the only one.
It was left to interim UEFA boss Theodore Theodoridis to announce that "just as we entered the press conference," it had been decided that Platini would be allowed to attend the event in his home nation, despite his ban.
Everybody in the room perked up. Some news. And decided just as they walked in. A talking point that will distract from any grimness. How incredibly convenient for every single person involved!
All the rest of the questions were variations on "What if someone blows this tournament up? What then?"
These practised operators droned through every one. Nothing of substance was revealed. They already knew all takes would be Platini-based.
That was the limit of their PR aspiration hours before the start of the best football tournament in the world.
That's when you thought to yourself, man, do they ever need a win.
FIFA's troubles aren't going away. The new president, Gianni Infantino, is beginning to behave like a nascent Sepp Blatter, hiring and firing at leisure and whining about receiving a $3-million salary to do essentially nothing.
All the same issues trickle down to UEFA, which Platini ran like it was his own political party. Key problem – he wasn't much of a politician.
The Copa America, which is currently under way in the United States, is a shambles. Here's something nobody could possibly have seen coming – Americans don't want to pay to see South Americans they've never heard of play soccer.
For the establishment that remains in control of the game, the Euro is now the final fig leaf. In order to maintain any sense that they know how to do their only real job – stage international tournaments – this must be error-free.
If it goes sideways on the ground or – heaven forfend – is interrupted by a terror outrage, it puts the whole global enterprise at further risk.
Someone's reputation is on the line at every major tournament. This may be the first in a long while where it can be said that everyone's reputation is riding on it.
One day to go. And then we'll get to see what sort of act they're putting on beside the musical opener.
Cathal Kelly