Boris knocks England out of the World Cup...

(well, for a couple of hours at least!)

ENGLAND’S participation at this summer’s World Cup in Russia was called into question yesterday when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appeared to suggest the tournament should be boycotted.

Johnson, responding to the spy poison case in Salisbury, said: ‘For my part, I think it will be difficult to see how, thinking ahead to the World Cup this summer, it would be very difficult to imagine that UK representation at that event could go ahead in the normal way. We will certainly have to consider that.’ Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville immediately condemned Johnson’s comments, saying on Twitter: ‘He’s a useless idiot! Why bring football into it?’

However, sources close to Johnson later insisted the Foreign Secretary was not referring to Gareth Southgate’s team but to officials and dignitaries representing England at the finals, which start on June 14.

Scotland fans had already taken to Twitter to suggest their country’s absence from finals was merely ‘trendsetting’ for our neighbours.

However, there is a serious side to what is undoubtedly going to be a controversial showpiece occasion.

There are already fears that safety will be a major issue in Russia, particularly after gangs of thugs clashed with England supporters in France at Euro 2016.

Videos have already emerged of Russian hooligans staging practice fights and there have been specific threats directed at travelling English fans.

The shiny story that FIFA and president Vladimir Putin want to see propagated is of a nation throwing open its doors.

The latest propaganda, disseminated only yesterday, had Putin (below) doing keepieuppies at the Kremlin.

But the infrastructure of this desperately poor nation looks extremely frayed. England fans will be encouraged to travel between group games by ‘football special trains’, because there will be very few flights available.

Those journeys — from Volgograd to Nizhny Novgorod and on to Kaliningrad, where England face Belgium in the west — are each 20 hours long.

Russian officers are determined to confine drinking to designated fan zones. But these carry a serious risk of drink-fuelled disorder. The threat of long prison terms for Russian hooligans may help. Many are clearly intimidated by that prospect.

But no kind of legislation can be prepared for the nation’s deeply-unreconstructed outlook on diversity.

There is a genuine risk of players being subjected to racist chants.

Moscow’s chief human rights ombudswoman has said nearly 100 cases of racism were recorded between 2014 and 2016 at stadiums across Moscow.