WHEN FIFA SMELL MONEY AND VOTES, EXPECT THE WORST

SPEAKING at the Asian Football Confederation congress last weekend, FIFA president Gianni Infantino reiterated his desire for a 48-team World Cup in 2022. ‘It will be a nice achievement if the first World Cup with 48 teams is played in Asia,’ he said. ‘Sharing games with a few of the neighbouring countries is, of course, an option, to make it a true World Cup for the world and for the whole Gulf region.’ Within two days, Oman, one of two countries targeted in this expansion, pulled out. ‘We’ve been asked about this many times and our answer is: we are not ready, we are not ready,’ Yusuf bin Alawi, Oman’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, told CNN. ‘Qatar are hosts and it must stay there.’ And yet, as Infantino smells money and votes, few believe common sense will prevail. Kuwait are potential co-hosts still and Qatar have said they are open to 48 teams in principle and will be conducting feasibility studies. Seeing as every feasibility study warned against taking the competition there in the first place, these reports can be bent in to the shape of FIFA’s choosing. Dollar-shaped, usually. Expect the worst. IF the FA were hoping that toadying to the governing bodies would curry favour for their World Cup bid, they received a rude awakening. Greg Clarke, chairman of the soon-to-be English FA — a name change designed to flag up our new humility by dumping on our history — met with the heads of UEFA, only to be told there will be no preferred European candidate for 2030. This pits the British bid against one from Spain, Portugal and Morocco — the first to involve two confederations and, as such, a veritable vote hoover. We’ve tried creeping, we’ve tried crawling — why not just be ourselves and if we lose, we lose?