OH NO, NOT THE WORLD CUP AS WELL

We're on the eve of FIFA's decision about where to allocate the 2018 World Cup and the tension is palpable. England's "World Cup Team", not to be confused with people who actually play football have, for example, worked themselves up into a lather about the airing of a BBC Panorama programme strongly suggesting three of the current FIFA decision makers took bribes, substantial bribes, from ISL (International Sports & Leisure) in the 1990s.

The Sun has this morning, I understand, written an open letter to FIFA explaining that their decision makers should not think the British people are against the idea of hosting the football World Cup, whatever impression the BBC may have made. Well this British person does not want to host the World Cup - the Olympics were already, to my mind a step too far (for example making London to only city to host the Games three times) - we don't need the cost and disruption of the World Cup as well.

But my opposition is not just about the money, not just about the fact we will have another bout of construction projects a la Crossrail which, when questioned, are commended to us with the statement, "for the Olympics", it is also specific opposition to football.

I have always felt, that football is a sport played by and watched by hooligans. The sport promotes tribalism and often descends into racism, it promotes the deification of physical attributes over the intellectual, it lifts men (inevitably men) of few moral positives to become role models, it underpins all the tedious conversations heard in bars and greasy spoons throughout the land and, worst of all, it promotes the wearing of manmade fibres.

That said, I would not be averse to Spurs winning the League or the Cup.