I’ve been working in New York the last few days (lucky me, I know) and was eager, on my Sunday morning time off, to find a bar showing the football game between Manchester United and Leicester City.

And so it was, that at 9.15am, I walked into the inevitable (as in every couple of hundred yards and no less impressive or hospitable for that!) Irish bar showing an English football game broadcast from Manchester between two teams composed of players from Britain, Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. I was served a cold beer by a Russian bartender (it’s never too early for a Budweiser!) and sat at the bar flanked by two Norwegians, who like me were rooting for little old Leicester City, the ultimate in underdogs!

Eventually, a party of young Englishmen arrived for a late, or was it an early, breakfast? It was difficult to tell but a couple of them looked like they’d been drinking all night, as you can when you’re in your twenties. I wondered if they knew how lucky they are.

Some locals breezed in too but they were not interested in the “Saccer” and chatted amongst themselves, possibly enquiring into the health of their respective parents or maybe concluding a drug deal, I don’t know. I wasn’t paying any attention to them or anybody else for that matter, wrapped up as I was in the game, which ended in an entertainingly hard fought and fair draw.

We all went our separate ways at about 11am and, as I wandered down the street dodging the yellow taxis (most of which are driven, incidentally by Eastern Europeans and Asians boasting a smattering of English), I couldn’t help but think what a small – and wonderfully diverse – world we live in!