There is something quite satisfying about a once masterful football technician being reduced to sitting hunched over a laptop, tapping away at an iPad and flicking between stations in an attempt to keep up with the Champions League.
It is just about the only bond between two-time Champions League winner Thiago Alcantara - who also has four La Liga winners medals and seven Bundesliga triumphs to his name - and those of us passionate yet not proficient in professional football.
Even more unusually, I had the upper hand on the former Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Barcelona playmaker on the finesse front. While he scrambled across devices to keep up with the action in the revamped league phase, a fact he chose to admit ahead of conducting the draw for the knockout play-off round in Nyon, Switzerland, I relaxed opting to beam TNT Sports' Goals Show Xtra in the vacuous space of my second monitor turned control room.
For those unfamiliar, picture the NFL's Red Zone or a much more expensive and polished Open All Mics with the highlights live. Oh, and did I mention the supercomputer which takes up a third of the screen?
The special edition broadcasts - similar in style to offerings on Saturday afternoons - were expertly hosted by Matt Smith who somehow made it through two relentless nights of permutations, equations and the odd football cliche for good measure without an oxygen tank strapped to his back.
Then again, it was only the 64 goals in the four-and-a-half-hour Champions League show on Wednesday and another 52 in the bumper Europa League coverage the following night.
"I hope you have your popcorn ready," said the experienced broadcaster on night one of his remorseless rota. "Jeopardy, tick. Drama, tick. Goals absolutely," he said on Thursday.
Smith wasn't lying. It was entertaining, in fact so constant was the barrage of highlights that it was easy to forget who was in the studio in the total assault on the senses - it was Ally McCoist, Karen Carney, James Horncastle, Joe Cole and Don Hutchison by the way.
For the neutral or follower of a proverbial smaller club, it was the perfect way to follow the action without the threat of strapping in for a European classic only to be served up the dullest of draws.
On the left of the screen was an ever-changing league table being reordered every minute as each plot unfolded across the continent. There was no scrambling to work out the goal difference or how each result impacted the other - it was sorted, immmediately.
So slick was the production, that when Becky Ives reported live from Rangers against Union Saint-Gilloise following a Nice goal which catapulted Philippe Clement's side into the top eight it came as a surprise to those sat around her inside Ibrox.
"Do you know Nice have scored, you are top eight at the minute? No, they haven't got a clue, we need to tell them," said the broadcaster, those of us with the Goals Show on knew that an age ago - and without too much excitement.
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Therein lies the problem, though. While there can be no slaughtering of the product for what it was - which was an incredibly handy and easily digestible guide through the complex league phase system - there was a tinge of emptiness and numbness to it all.
The insight was excellent, particularly that of Horncastle, having the goals shown immediately was magic and never allowed a dull moment but it didn't hit the same.
Navigating the mountainous UEFA rulebook requires a Sherpa at the best of times, in the inaugural year of a new format that was painstakingly clear. It was obvious then to have a show dedicated to explaining the state of play, showing the key moments and providing crucial information on the importance of each result.
In adding that context, though, the show killed the context of each individual game. There was little time for host Smith to breathe between segueing into pundit insight or cutting them off to jet off to another stadium for more drama.
The joy of each fixture in its own right was lost in the format, it was a necessary evil in many ways with the show a revelation to many but perhaps equally an indictment of the age of overconsumption we live in.
There is no question of the value of such programming in this day and age, and I dare suggest it has been long overdue on European nights with more questions in the stands than answers but it simply doesn't compete with watching a full match, start to finish and discovering the moving pieces without a huge league table.
Multiple times during the broadcast reference was made to players huddled round a phone desperately awaiting a result to secure their qualification or on the opposite extreme crush their ambition.
Those scenes are special, those scenes are what football is all about - players, managers and fans all with fingers crossed in unison - but only after maintaining full focus on their own result first.
The Goals Show Xtra won't go anywhere, or at least I hope not or I'll have to dig out a calculator this time next year, but it doesn't hold a candle to watching the drama packed into one 90-minute match.
"The Geezer, Joe Cole. The Don, Mr Hutchison. And the correspondent, James Horncastle," as Smith introduced them on the second night, same time next year, but only on the second monitor.
