SFA and FAI can’t take moral high ground any more

THIS FIFA business is like the bubonic plague. Football administrators can run, but they can’t hide. It strikes them all in the end. SFA chief executive Stewart Regan is copping flak from all sides over last night’s Qatar friendly. MSPs, Amnesty International, Tartan Army motor mouths. They’re all sliding in, studs up. And rightly so. The SFA thought it a good idea to flirt with a tiny Gulf state widely suspected of buying a World Cup from Sepp Blatter and his cronies. It really wasn’t. The governing body argue they have done nothing wrong. Before last night’s Easter Road friendly, they promised to have a stiff, stern word with their guests over their human rights record. Like inviting neighbours round to lecture them on the state of their flowerbed, that’s poor form. Better, surely, to give them a wide berth. It’s been clear for some time that Qatar are as toxic as Blatter. Climb into bed with either and you’ll finish up with a nasty rash. John Delaney, chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, knows this better than most. A man who says what he likes and likes what he says, Delaney (right) has lectured the SFA on their conduct in the past. He branded the Hampden body ‘unprofessional’ after they refused to bow to his demands for 8,000 tickets for Ireland’s Euro 2016 qualifier at Celtic Park last November. Delaney is no stranger to unprofessional behaviour, of course. Last November, he was forced to apologise for singing an IRA song in a Dublin pub. There will be no more moral lectures, then, when the SFA bigwigs roll up at the Aviva Stadium next Saturday. Not after it emerged this week that the FAI accepted €5million from Blatter as hush money to keep it zipped about the infamous Thierry Henry handball, which robbed the Irish of a slot at World Cup Finals in South Africa in 2010. Rightly, the Irish screamed blue murder and threw a hissy fit. Blatter made it all go away, as he usually does, with a large cheque. FIFA and the Qataris find money can buy them anything. Because, regrettably, it usually does. But it can’t buy them integrity. And it can’t buy them respect. The football associations of Scotland and Ireland compromised both when they took to the dancefloor with some grasping, sleazy chancers.