There were two news stories in the weekend’s press regarding our national game and neither made for particularly good reading.

The first concerned one of the most corrupt stories in the history of what worldwide appears to be anything but a “beautiful game”. It was hardly a new story – more like an old one reheated – but still shocking enough to cause a sharp intake of breath.

I imagine that most football fans were at least a little suspicious on hearing, a couple of years ago, that football’s ruling body (Fifa) had awarded Qatar the 2022 World Cup. Qatar, though exceedingly wealthy, is a small desert country with no history of football and a summer climate hot enough at 50C to exhaust the average bloke walking the couple of hundred yards to his local camel store.  Suspicions of skulduggery were vindicated when it was subsequently revealed that a number of men on the committee responsible for awarding the World Cup had somehow accumulated several million dollars via bank accounts linked to the Qatari multi-millionaire Mohamed Bin Hammam.

The news this week that the FBI, rather than the inept, self-serving and self-congratulatory Fifa  are now conducting a thorough investigation into the affair following the discovery that at least some of the bribe money was linked to a New York bank account ratchets the story up another couple of levels. Perhaps it will result in Qatar being stripped of its award and the World Cup being given to a true footballing nation but somehow I doubt it. Money trumps fans any day of the week.

The second story concerned Saturday’s Premier League game between Chelsea and Arsenal where the referee, aided by two assistants and the fourth official, sent off the wrong player for deliberate handball. Television replays showed clearly who the culprit was and even if, somehow, the referee wasn’t to know that (though the incident took place right in front of him) the fourth official, aided by technology, certainly was. Even when the culprit himself came up to the referee and said “It was me ref” the referee ignored him. Aside from the clear incompetence of the officials who, as one leading ex-referee stated this weekend, should not officiate again this season (why just this season?)is there any reason why football cannot avail itself of the technology used by other sports?

Every year this question is raised but the arrogant authorities (in the case of Fifa no doubt too busy enjoying their Qatar bonuses) say that football doesn’t need it. Well it obviously does and until football drags itself into the 21^st century and uses the instant replays and transparent fairness of other sports, such as American Football for example, the “beautiful game” will remain stuck in a murky dank time warp of corruption and incompetence.