Russia will host the 2018 World Cup. Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup. This represents a period of wilderness for the sport of international football. The World Cup is a football tournament that brings together the football cultures of the world. It creates rivalries and relationships, through sport that are better played out on a 2-acre grass field than across nation states with nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, the tournament has been hijacked, along with anything else that is popular enough to be televised globally. Hijacked by marketing teams, big business, and cling ons who take huge chunks of the generated cash without ever kicking a football.
In the post war days, if you played for your country, you were invited to turn up at a certain venue at a certain time, and that's what you did. The honour is all yours, and get there you would, for you were picked from the entire population to represent your country at the sport you love.
England has watched football go round the world since developing the game from its roots in the educational establishments who first discovered the need for leisure facilities as part of healthy working and educational life.
England has no right to host a tournament ahead of any other nation. This is because FIFA does not recognise England as anything other than the primordial slime from which the DNA of football sprung forth. If football is, in evolutionary terms, homo-sapiens, then the world views England as orang-u-tangs. Not to be taken seriously.
At its core, like all English sports, both amateur and "professional", is the essence of fair play, which still remains, by and large, at all strata. The top flight has become corrupt in its abuse of officials, due not only to foreign influence, but due to the pressure on managers from their bosses to achieve results. Managers claim the right to accuse referees, and their judgements, of ending their careers. No referee has any obligation to the financial repercussions of their decisions. The amount of money a club chooses to invest into gaining success on the field, has no bearing on refereeing decisions. Yet they are blamed for "losing a man his job" and "costing a club their season".
If England gave the ingredients, world sport created their own recipes. The physical side of football - a contact sport involving fair physical strength - has been eroded away from the world game. This is perpetuated by refereeing culture around the world. A refereeing culture that, from an English perspective, appears to advocate faking injury, faking contact, shirt pulling, professional fouls, yet which frowns upon a slightly raised foot or any tackle that even slightly injures the opponent.
This is not a case of English paranoia. England is not paranoid in this case. Indeed, one only needs to consult the history books which show England was banned from European football from 1986 until the mid 1990s because of hooliganism. Understandable, you may imagine, until you witness the unpunished acts of hooliganism found at football grounds across Europe during and well after that period.
English football had, at its core, fair play. This was not passed onto the rest of the world. Perhaps it is, in conclusion, the biggest fault of English football that it has retained a naive resistance to this. If we couldn't beat them, should England have joined them? Has it taken the likes of Owen and Beckham to learn the art of the convincing dive in order to compete at the top level?
England retain this sense of honour which, in terms of international sport, is neanderthal, compared to the cold, calculated methods now employed throughout the world.
I feel England should retain its honourable view of sport. In England, there is still an air of amateurism in sport. Apart from the gamesmanship polluted top flight, professional sport in the main retains a strong sense of fiar play. Any player who takes a dive is penalised by officials and castigated by opponents and, occasionally, their own manager.
What I see evolving from now on are break away tournaments involving major teams and major prize money. Football is perhaps far too lucrative a product for nations to wait 4 years to cash in. I envisage a 6 or 8 team tournament each summer, hosted at Wembley, and involving huge prize money for the winners. TV contracts can be secured, to cover costs, and fans can come and watch the best teams in the world playing on home soil. The confederations cup in France has gathered momentum in recent years. The voice of the FA continues to bow to the corrupt FIFA system but I would suggest that if the English FA don't do it, other countries will take the lead. Once again, England will be last in, and, as in the recent World Cup venue vote, first out.
When England first allowed FIFA to run away with football they gave up the right to have a say on how the sport is run. What the English have to do is fall back into the background, toe the line, and remind ourselves that we are an insignificant football nation in the views of the world body.
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