F.A. no better than F.I.F.A.

At the risk of upsetting patriotic readers, Don’t Call Me Dave was pleased that England did not win the right to host the World Cup in 2018. It is not that he thinks we couldn’t do a good job, because patently we could. Nor does it have anything to do with cost, because the support for football in this country almost ensures we would run the contest at a profit.

It is simply that we had no business taking part in the bidding process. Panorama and the Sunday Times both exposed corruption within F.I.F.A. but the F.A. is no paragon of virtue. It is neither democratic nor accountable in any shape or form to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary football fans who fund this archaic organisation from the money they pay week in and week out to watch their favourite team.

It has been reported that England have now cancelled a friendly game in Thailand which had been agreed in order to secure the vote of the Thai F.A. Boris Johnson has withdrawn hospitality previously offered to Sebb Blatter for the Olympics. How can we complain about corruption within F.I.F.A. when we are not averse to making grubby deals of our own?

The simple truth is that the F.A. is stuffed full of crusty old farts who seem to be rather partial to all the corporate hospitality that goes with the job. Football is of secondary importance to them. They knew full well what F.I.F.A. was like and yet they were willing to play them at their game - until it all went tits up. It is far too late for the F.A. to now adopt the moral high ground and we should never even considered submitting a bid knowing that the system was rotten.

We blew £15 million on a bid which had absolutely no chance of winning. Just think what a difference that amount of money could have made to schools football?

Our country has been humiliated through the deluded vanity of a bunch of self-serving troglodytes. If we want to reclaim the game for its real supporters, fans should boycott International games until all the ruling bodies get their houses in order. Until then, it is time to say F.O. to the F.A.