Fifa-Fi-Fo-Fum

"I want one BILLION dollars."

‘A World Cup of fraud’, said Loretta Lynch, the US attorney general. So did the IRS’s criminal investigations unit’s chief investigator, Richard Weber, before adding, ‘today we are issuing FIFA a red card’. ‘AMERICA(N METAPHORS)! F*CK YEAH!’, he didn’t add, unfortunately.

You can say what you like about FIFA, but it certainly doesn’t do things by half. Nine senior FIFA officials arrested for trousering somewhere in the region of $150m over the last 25 years, 25 as yet un-named co-conspirators, investigations into the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, and more racketeering on the go than Roland Garros.

Preview #2 - the World Cup is ACE

IT'S GOING TO BE ACE YOU F***S

Part two of our World Cup preview goes all Eric Idle and looks on the bright side. It's a World Cup. In Brazil. A WORLD CUP. IN BRAZIL. What's not to love, exactly?

When is a preview not a preview? When it comes after the event has started? Oh shit. We better start writing then. Plans here to concoct something approaching a coherent preview and even a series of podcasts have gone awry in a blaze of work deadlines and £4.50-for-two vodka and coke deals in York’s premier nightspot, Fibbers. So what we’ve decided to do, in principle at least, is make a half-arsed attempt to cover as much of the tournament as we can, which will probably end up being a solitary article lamenting England’s winless, car-crash of a capitulation at the group stage, while taking the piss out of the root and branch enquiry into the national team’s failings in South Africa four years ago. Business as usual then.

Preview #1 - the World Cup is AWFUL

'Corruption you say? Kiss my ball(s)'

It's the first of our, let's call them 'anticipated', World Cup previews. We were going to do the positive one first, but we thought 'sod it', which before you start moaning is exactly the attitude you'll have too once you've finished with this one. 

A Load of Balls

World cupping

It’s perhaps one of football’s greater ironies that FIFA spend a great deal of time trying to make the game produce more goals and excitement to the general detriment of draws, only to spend an inordinate amount of other people’s time and money on one that is so pointless and overblown that from an initial level of anticipation at the start, viewers are forced into to a general state of torpor and indifference by the close. A bit like this paragraph.

Never Mind The Bollocks

"Yes, I WILL be doing this every week."

Close season transfer speculation/gossip/bullshit, for me, reached its zenith in the (probably balmy) summer of 1996. When my peers and I were young enough not to know better and had yet to be infected by pessimism, especially as England had come desperately close to their first final of my lifetime until that ultimate of bastards Andreas Moller snatched away the dream in a way only a bastard of German heritage can.

Reassuringly Irrelevant

"LALALALALALA"

Fresh from guaranteeing that the world’s elite footballers will all boil to death on the surface of Qatar in 2022, current governing body FIFA has decided to preoccupy itself with how best to keep body temperatures high until the W-oil-d Cup in the Middle East. The International Football Association Board (IFAB) – the game’s lawmaker, made up of FIFA, the FA and the three other home nations – will host its Annual General Meeting on March 5 at Celtic Manor in Wales. TAKE THAT FA. Not even fit to host your own admin meetings.

FIFA submits a report to the IFAB in preparation for the meeting. On the agenda, which presumably doesn’t include the whole ‘rooting out corruption’ thingy, are snoods. Fucking hell. SNOODS.

Beeb Fucks Everything Up For Everyone Especially The Kids

Despite the cold snap outside and the hour and a half commute I felt cheery this morning. Chipper even. Nothing warms a Magic Sponger’s cockles like a surge of righteous indignation as misplaced as a Sergio Ramos tackle on Lionel Messi. And so it began when I got to my desk. Never mind going to the Guardian’s website, they’ll only reaffirm my own opinions and who wants that? No. I first went, with not a little glee, to see what Ian ‘Mr England’ Wright made of yesterday’s proceedings in Zurich. True to form, absolute fucking goldmine. I could already hear the chants of ‘its too easy’ ringing in my ears, but that’s the point. Ghost written or not, Wrighty’s comments are so wide of the mark as to make a Qatari striker look deadly.

The Very Wrong Stuff

We don’t enjoy all this ranting and raving, you know. Bushby’s already got notoriously high blood pressure. But sometimes it is absolutely necessary. It would have been really nice to write a celebration of Barcelona’s masterclass in El Clasico, or an excitable review of the FA Cup draw, which is sending York to Bolton in January. Unfortunately, though, Panorama broadcast a programme about corruption in FIFA, and the Sun shat itself.

The Bigger Pitchure

This plastic pitch stuff is a right old bru-ha-ha, isn’t it? ‘It’s not an excuse’, harrumphed Harry Redknapp, before going on the claim that at least four of his elite, highly-paid, professional sportsmen ‘couldn’t handle’ playing on what was essentially a soft flat carpet. I’ve heard all about the ramifications of artificial pitches for the knees of Ledley King and Tom Huddlestone, but then I’ve also been hearing about how hard and unforgiving ‘these new grass pitches’ are for the last five years. Surely spraying gallons of water over any pitch before kick-off makes them reasonably dangerous too?