WHO WANTS TO COSY UP TO QATAR?

THEY were never the best diplomats, but at least the FA used to be on the right side of the argument. When David Bernstein stood up at FIFA’s congress in 2011 and denounced the one-candidate presidential re-election of Sepp Blatter, we knew he wasn’t helping England’s chances of winning friends on the international stage — but he was right. Blatter was a crook and was later exposed. So were many of those who denounced the FA that day. Spain’s representative Angel Maria Villa Llona: a crook, arrested last year for embezzling funds. Julio Grondona of Argentina: a dead crook — his reputation traduced posthumously, confirming what had been rumoured for years. ‘Yes we are facing allegations,’ said Cypriot delegate Costakis Koutsokoumnis. ‘Allegations, what a beautiful English word that is. Someone says a few things in the Press and these things take their own body and mind, they are expanded, take a seed in our minds without most of the time a single shred of truth.’ Yet since that pompous ass spoke, 40 individuals employed by, representing, or connected to FIFA have been charged with corruption. The president he voted for stood down in disgrace and his organisation is now a byword for sleaze. At least, though, the FA called it. As they did in 2015 when Greg Dyke referred to the award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar as ‘the worst moment in FIFA’s history’. This was hardly an outspoken view, mind. In 2013, the then chairman of the Football League took a similar line. ‘Let’s have a new vote,’ said Greg Clarke. ‘Don’t start fiddling at the edges — run it again.’ Yet who was this emerging from Doha last week confirming greater co-operation between England and Qatar in football matters? It was Clarke, now chairman of the FA and masterfully steering his organisation to the wrong side of the argument, with the same dignity he has brought to so many committee rooms these last 12 months. ‘The FA is pleased to commit to this knowledge-sharing partnership with the Qatar Football Association,’ he blathered. Yet what knowledge do we hope to glean from a nation we now know bought the World Cup? What can they provide? The Good Bribe Guide? Who’s Who to Bung? There is some guff about arranging friendlies across age groups, but as Qatar’s first team contrived to lose to Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, China, Curacao and Liechtenstein in 2017, this might not be as much use to Gareth Southgate as Clarke imagines — although a Wembley fixture would at least be a good vehicle for a boycott. Ultimately, the new Memorandum of Understanding is no more than Clarke promising that we’re good boys now. That we’ll behave. That we want to come back into their crummy club, join the shop-soiled friends of FIFA in toeing the party line. We think we’ll get a World Cup that way — but if this is the price, why would we ever want it?