What's the ultimate humiliation for a footballer?
On the pitch, it's being subbed on and then subbed off again in the same match.
It's exactly what Juan Mata had to endure in the Community Shield as Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho hauled him off in stoppage time despite having put him on after the hour mark.
Naturally Mourinho's reasoning was queried after the full-time whistle and his response appeared conciliatory and almost apologetic towards Mata on paper.
First off, the ex-Chelsea boss cited tactics.
""The rules allowed six changes, and I wanted to stop the game, to kill time. I have one more player and I have to pick the smallest one," he said.
Mata is 1m70 and new signing Henrikh Mkhitaryan who replaced him might be 8cm taller but he is no giant when it comes to defending aerial balls.
Mourinho is well within his rights to make any tactical call he wishes. But given that the same manager sold the exact same player when they were at Chelsea, there remains a lingering suspicion that Mourinho has no place for Mata in the medium-to-long-term - and again he is well within his rights to choose the players he sees as fitting into his plans.
But perhaps there are betters ways to remove a player without the risk of them being humiliated publicly with Mourinho acknowledging that there must have been some level of unhappiness from the player when he added that Mata "is happy now".
Manchester United's Bastian Schweinsteiger (left) and Manchester City's Bacary Sagna battle for the ball during the Barclays Premier League match at the Etihad Stadium, Manchester. Picture by: Nigel French / PA Wire/Press Association Images
BBC Sport pundit and ex-Liverpool midfielder Danny Murphy clearly has his suspicions: "They have a lot of history at Chelsea and he has embarrassed him in front of his supporters and his family. He is basically saying to him you are not important and he has done it publicly. I can't see him still being at the club at the end of August."
It's not too dissimilar to the treatment meted out to Bastian Schweinsteiger.
There is no question that the World Cup-winning midfielder is past his best and like Mata, Mourinho is under no obligation to keep him at Old Trafford if he finds his presence unnecessary.
But the manager has made his own opinion public by making the ex-Bayern Munich and Germany playmaker train away from the first team immediately.
It's a move that has been criticised vociferously in some quarters, with Bayern CEO Karl Heinz Rummenigge saying with implied criticism towards United and Mourinho that "maybe it is also evidence that we deal with issues a bit more humanely, a bit more fairly and more reliably here at Bayern than is the case in one or the other bigger clubs in Europe".
Mourinho hasn't taken that lying down with a "Mother Teresa of Football" dig aimed at clubs like Bayern.
If you take all of that on board, along with not-so-subtle rebukes at Jurgen Klopp and his favourite target Arsene Wenger, then aspects of the past Mourinho playbook are showing signs of surviving.
He did return to Chelsea as the "Happy One" and while that worked for the first two seasons, the mind games and siege mentality caused a spectacular downturn in the third campaign as it has often done in other portions of his career.
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