Corruption, Quotas, El Clasico that did not deserve to be called Clasico or presidents that need former internationals to bolster their reputation. There could easily be more “incidents” added to this to highlight the state of the game in the early twenty-first century. On top of that there are ongoing accusations of bribery within FIFA.

It could not be worse for any football fan these days when studying the headlines of the sports sections. While El Clasico proved that football can be a negative and destructive affair, last week’s accusations of Mediapart that the French Football Federation has agreed to introduce quotas to reduce the number of players with double nationality, i.e. non-French origin, was just proof enough that at the core of the game has gone seriously wrong. The inquiry be the ministry of sports has so far cleared all accusations, particularly against Laurent Blanc, but the aftertaste of the affair remains sour and will stick with French football for a while yet.

Ever since FIFA awarded Russia and Qatar the World Cup in 2018 and 2022 respectively, the smell of corruption could not be avoided. The Guardian today revealed that several members of the FIFA Executive Committee were trying to seek personal advantages in return for their votes for the England bid. Of course Holy Sepp does not believe this to be true and if so he himself will lead the cleaning process at the heart of FIFA. The persons accused of bribery attempts of course deny the charges and are possibly helped by the fact that Lord Triesman, was ousted from office after a scandalous interview in which he spoke of corruption and match fixing.

Earlier this year the Tchetchnyan president Kadyrow invited Lothar Matth