I do like Marina Hyde’s Guardian quip: “They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're altogether ooky: the FIFA family.” Forget Russia being a mafia state, it’s FIFA who are the legal racketeers par excellence. One might even find something admirable in their sheer effrontery, the quality of doggedness, were they at least half way logical in their defence. In one breath, the octogenarian Argentine FIFA Executive Committee member, Julio Grondona, breathes fire about English attacks (on the FIFA family that Joseph Blatter seems to personify) and the lies of English journalism about bribery; in the next he says he would only vote for England’s 2018 bid if they had handed the Falkland Islands over to Buenos Aires – sounds mighty similar to a bribe, that. This doddery fool then rails against the USA (the only possible link to Chuck Blazer during the entire conference) saying he wouldn’t vote for them because it would be the same as voting for England. See the logic? No, I don’t either.
Then you get the mighty grouping of Cyprus, Fiji, Benin, Congo and someone else (yes they really are that important). It’s tempting to think “Who gives a shit what Benin thinks?” but that would exemplify English arrogance. Every football federation is valid, it’s just the people who run them that makes the former Pakistani cricket chief, Ijaz ‘Eejit’ Butt, look not dissimilar to a model of rational incorruptibility.
Rather than moaning, the FA needs to start the long, hard business of assiduous networking, particularly with heir apparent as FIFA president Michel Platini. Overall, the rest of the world doesn’t much care for the internal workings of FIFA. The FA will have their work cut out.