"Dad! Did you see De Bruyne? And Jesus? He winked at me when he went past!"
Excitement started around Manchester City's arrival long before they arrived at the County Ground - most of Swindon Town's opponents don't normally travel by aeroplane, and there is only one £100m footballer in the country - and home fans queued for over an hour to be at the front of the line to see the Premier League champions turn up on their branded bus for this FA Cup Third Round tie.
The atmosphere was far from deferential, right from the off. City players walked the few steps from their coach to the tunnel accompanied by boos or chants asking who they were as the home fans got into the pantomime spirit early. That carried through into the match as the crowd relished the chance to roar on the underdogs or enjoy any misses from the visitors; "How **** must you be, it's only 3-0" was the chant after Gabriel Jesus missed his penalty.
Cutting through the boos at the bus though was excitement as kids recognised players that they have only previously seen on the telly - especially if they responded to their names as Jesus did. Inside the ground it was a similar story, with Kevin De Bruyne the topic of many conversations before, during and after he had carried out his warmup.
City would likely have played a strong lineup anyway for this fixture - Pep Guardiola did similar at League Two side Cheltenham Town last season in the fourth round of the same competition - but it is hard not to think that their seven Covid absentees contributed towards seven regular first-team players starting this game; Kyle Walker, Ruben Dias, Joao Cancelo, Rodri, Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva and Kevin De Bruyne all get into City's strongest XI at the moment.
Having shown that respect for their opponents with the lineup, City continued to by treating the game professionally from the off. They pressed hard and high, pouncing on any mistakes such as the ones that led to the second goal, as they would in any other match.
Even if City wouldn't have wanted to concede in the second half to give the home fans their biggest cheer of the night, the way Cole Palmer finished after that to restore the three-goal advantage and then Rodri shook the crossbar in the 90th minute kept the quality running through right to the end of the match, before warm exchanges with the opposition players at full-time.
In short, Swindon fans got to see exactly what Arsenal's did last week and what Chelsea's will soon.
City hurried off back to Manchester after their post-match media duties were completed, and Swindon will also move on quickly; their manager had already said beforehand that their league games were more important, and the Blues are the same.
It will linger for many of the 14,753 in attendance for much longer though, and plenty of kids will be able to go into school on Monday morning and say that they got to watch De Bruyne, Jesus, Kyle Walker and more playing live at their stadium.
When people talk about scrapping domestic cups or playing weakened teams, nights like this are all the evidence needed to prove that the FA Cup should be protected.
