BREAKING (and I use that word loosely): Rayan Cherki, Manchester City's magnificent French enigma, has apparently swapped shirts with an opponent DURING a match. Not at half-time. Not at the final whistle. Not in the tunnel while pretending to look for the physio room. During actual, live, ball-in-play professional football. And Pep Guardiola was asked about it. And Pep had thoughts.

Now look. I have been covering football's strangest moments for longer than I care to admit, and I have seen some things. I once watched a goalkeeper eat a pie during a goal kick. I saw a centre-back check his phone at a throw-in (it was a notification from Deliveroo, apparently). But a mid-match shirt swap? That's new territory. That's the frontier. That's Neil Armstrong stuff, except instead of planting a flag on the moon, you're handing your sweaty polyester to a man who was trying to two-foot you thirty seconds ago.

Sources close to sources tell me that Guardiola's response was measured, diplomatic, and absolutely dripping with the kind of controlled fury that only a man who has won 847 trophies can pull off. You know the face. The "I am not angry, I am disappointed" face. The face your dad made when you reversed into the wheelie bin and then lied about it.

But here's what fascinates me. The mid-match shirt swap is, when you think about it, the ultimate power move. The full-time swap? That's polite. That's a handshake at the end of a job interview. The half-time swap is slightly more daring, like leaving a party at 10pm and saying "I've got an early one." But mid-match? Mid-match is walking into the job interview, taking the interviewer's jacket, putting it on, and then asking THEM the questions.

I did some digging (by which I mean I spent forty minutes on Twitter and ate a Twirl) and it turns out mid-match shirt swaps have a longer history than you'd think. There was a famous incident in the 1962 World Cup where a Chilean player allegedly tried to swap with a Brazilian opponent during a corner, though historians dispute whether this was a swap or simply a very aggressive cuddle. In 2011, a Serie B match reportedly featured two defenders exchanging kits during a lengthy VAR check, though both later claimed they were "just cold."

The etiquette, as far as I can establish, is non-existent. There is no FIFA protocol for this. The Laws of the Game mention that players must wear "distinguishable" kit but say nothing about the timeline for redistribution. Technically, as long as Cherki put on a shirt that was a different colour from the opponent's, he could argue he was simply... restocking. Like a shelf-filler at Tesco, except the shelf is your torso and the product is polyester worth about £80 in the club shop.

What I love most is imagining the conversation. You're in the middle of a Premier League match. The ball is somewhere near the halfway line. You jog over to your direct opponent, a man you've been kicking and being kicked by for the last hour, and you say what? "Alright mate, love your work, can I have your top?" In what other workplace does this happen? Can you imagine walking into Greggs mid-shift and saying "Darren, I love your apron, can we trade?" You'd be escorted off the premises.

Pep, to his credit, seems to have handled this with the weary acceptance of a man who has seen everything. He's managed Messi. He's managed Haaland. He's survived a 115-charge saga. One of his wingers bartering knitwear during live football probably doesn't even crack his top fifty list of "things that have made me consider retirement this month."

Cherki, for his part, appears entirely unbothered, which tracks with everything we know about Cherki. This is a man who plays football like he's simultaneously auditioning for Cirque du Soleil and trying to annoy his older brother. A mid-match shirt swap is practically restrained by his standards.

Will it start a trend? Sources close to sources tell me... probably not. But I live in hope. The beautiful game just got a little more beautiful. And a little more confusing.

Terry Tap-In, reporting from the lost property bin at the Etihad.