Mihir Bose: FIFA still runs football as if it were a cottage industry

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Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, and many of his fellow executive members, may console themselves by saying that the crisis that has engulfed the organisation – both familiar and depressing – is all the fault of the dastardly British press and its nefarious ways.

They could not be more mistaken. They should look within themselves and ask why, having made the world’s most popular game into such a cash cow, they fail to run it like a proper corporate organisation where decisions are not only reached in good time,

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David Owen: Ultra-realism and why World Cup bidding contests as we know them might soon be consigned to history

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For Australia, Ben Buckley spoke about a “No Worries World Cup”.

Alexei Sorokin said Russia would be ready to show “the new country” it had become.

But, for my money, much the most interesting presentation of the three World Cup bidders that spoke at this week’s International Football Arena was that given by Yuuichiro Nakajima of Japan, the only one of the trio, by my judgment, with little chance of winning.

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