No one upstaged Carla Bruni-Sarkozy during her visit to London last week, but Arsenal’s Emirates stadium did not do badly. Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown posed on the pitch and held a press conference at the north London football club – chosen because of its French manager and largely French-speaking dressing room.

The occasion provided many free mentions for Emirates, the Dubai-owned airline, which paid more than £100m to give its name to the stadium. Given how smoothly the Emirates brand has slipped into sporting conversation, it is extraordinary that English football, so ruthlessly commercial in everything else, took so long to tumble to stadium naming rights.