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As we approach the final week of the contest to decide where the 2018 and 2022 World Cups will be played, in just the last day or so it has emerged that:
● British Prime Minister David Cameron is to spend the best part of three days in Zurich, lobbying for the England 2018 bid. This after inviting Jack Warner, one of the most influential FIFA Executive Committee members, to lunch.
● Russia’s Government are making final plans for a visit to the Swiss city by Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister and one of the world’s most formidable power brokers.
● Former US President Bill Clinton, also expected in Zurich, has written an article for Sports Illustrated on the USA’s bid for the 2022 competition.
● Jeremy Hunt, the UK Culture Secretary, has embarked on a whistle-stop visit to Kuala Lumpur, where the Asian Football Confederation’s Annual Awards Gala takes place on November 24, to “press the case” for England’s bid.
Heck, even Lord Sugar, celeb captain of industry, has got in on the act, appealing to his nearly 150,000 Twitter followers to “get people behind the England bid”.
And of course, we now know that Prince William will be visiting Zurich as a fiancé.
In these still early days of the 21st century, there truly is nothing like a high-stakes sporting contest to bring otherwise rational leaders flocking.
With the Irish economy imploding and Korea on red alert, it is not as if the world cannot offer sterner challenges that warrant their attention.
Yet still they set course for FIFA House.
And the above list doesn’t even take account of more surreptitious encounters being carefully choreographed below the radar.
I am told, for example, that a senior FIFA ExCo member has a meeting on Wednesday at the base of another tremendously powerful political leader who is not expected in Zurich next week.
Oh and two heads of state – one from a country that is not even in either race – are apparently hooking up in the hope, it is suggested, that the non-partisan leader might help persuade an ExCo member of the same nationality to vote a certain way.
Now it seems to me that football might usefully ask itself how, since it wields this sort of clout, it might start devoting an awful lot more attention to ways it can make the world a better place.
In the meantime, it promises to be a tremendously exciting week.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938