David Owen

The material published in the latest Sunday Times expose has sparked renewed calls for Joseph Blatter, FIFA’s 78-year-old President, to stand down. This is not remotely surprising. And, indeed, I concur there are strong arguments for his current term being his last – even though, in the real world, he still looks well-placed to sail triumphantly to a fifth term from 2015.

I also think, though, that the question of Blatter’s personal future tends to distract attention from the more important issue.

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Heading to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup? Apprehensive about the demonstrations and logistical nighmares that might lie in wait for you? May I make a suggestion: pack a copy of James Montague’s kaleidoscopic new book Thirty-One Nil.

It will remind you that, however trying your current circumstances, things could be worse, while articulating, in a succession of scrupulously observed national tableaux, why you made the effort in the first place.

Not that the author makes a meal of his discomfort,

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When the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s Foundation Board, whose members include FIFA President Joseph Blatter, assembles in Montreal this weekend, it could helpfully reflect on the kerfuffle stirred up by this month’s announcement of the sanction meted out to Tyson Gay, the US sprinter, in the wake of his adverse analytical finding.

Gay received just a one-year suspension, and a loss of results dating back to July 2012, including an Olympic silver medal,

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Easter Monday brought one of those chance juxtapositions: FIFA Presidential candidate Jérôme Champagne’s third campaign letter bounced into my inbox just as those rumours of David Moyes’s impending departure from Manchester United started seriously swirling.

One of the many things that Moyes’s fate demonstrates is that transition seasons are no longer acceptable among football’s super-elite.

His ousting in this way helps to illustrate the validity of Champagne’s point that a “financial iron curtain”

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Names can be powerful things, particularly today when almost no-one is beyond the reach of electronic media.

In these superficial times, your name can be one of the most important factors in determining what people think about you and, hence, your destiny.

It is worth bearing this in mind when contemplating the fate of Saadi Gaddafi.

Now in prison in his native Libya having recently been extradited from Niger where he took refuge following the overthrow of his father,

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FIFA’s new financial report isn’t just the financial story of last year; it also offers a fascinating window on to the future. This is in the form of the governing body’s budget for the 2015-18 business cycle.

Readers shouldn’t look on this as set in concrete; some might say it isn’t even set in custard: not even Madame FIFA can gaze into her crystal ball with anything approaching infallibility.

But it does offer an informative glimpse into how Joseph Blatter and his chums think the medium-term future might pan out.

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You know for sure that the people’s game has become gentrified when luxury Swiss watch brands start sponsoring football clubs.

Now, five and a half years after Hublot set the ball rolling by sponsoring Manchester United, another landmark deal has been unveiled.

Maurice Lacroix has announced a three-year agreement with Barcelona that will see it become the Catalán club’s Official Watch Partner in a deal said to be worth somewhere in the seven figures of euros (ie upwards of €1 million).

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What do the following international football matches have in common: Brazil 0 Portugal 2 on 6 February 2007; Nigeria 1 Ghana 4 the same night; and Australia 3 Canada 0 on 15 October 2013?

Right, they were all played in London.

So was an extraordinary encounter last week pitting the Socceroos, once more, against Ecuador, France’s future World Cup opponents. While Roy Hodgson’s England were labouring to beat Denmark at Wembley,

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Well over 50 international football matches will be played on Wednesday, March 5.

They include some 2015 Asian Nations Cup games, Spain versus Italy and Portugal v Cameroon. They provide one of the last opportunities for experimentation for many of the qualifiers for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

And yet the most significant fixture to be played that night pits the world’s 79th -ranked team against a side that does not yet have any ranking.

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“Just arrived in Sochi,” Joseph Blatter tweeted on Tuesday. “Looking forward to meeting my friends and colleagues from the Olympic community before Sochi 2014.”

The FIFA President is an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member. So he will attend the IOC Session that precedes the Winter Olympics, the first to be chaired by Thomas Bach, the recently-elected IOC President.

There will no doubt also be opportunities to catch up with Russian officials,

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What impact should we expect UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations to have on business conducted during player transfer windows such as the one that closes today?

You might think the break-even requirement enshrined in the rules would have a chilling effect, dissuading clubs from splashing the cash on these costly assets.

Actually though I think this will be far from the case. Why? Because of the lop-sided way player valuations are dealt with in corporate accounts,

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FIFA Presidential elections are different. So it was probably par for the course that the first candidate out of the traps – and this more than 16 months before any vote – should at once cast doubt on his candidacy by refusing to make clear whether he would stay in the race if the incumbent President decides to run. Indeed, he admitted he did not think he could beat Joseph Blatter, who will mark 16 years in the post at this summer’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil,

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I was not altogether surprised on Friday to open my copy of The Guardian newspaper and find that the latest twists in the Qatar World Cup saga had combined with the approach of Sochi 2014 to provoke columnist Simon Jenkins into an elegant tirade.

These mega-events, Jenkins argued, “are about the crudest form of politics, that of national prestige.

“The athletico-military-industrial complex seems to have a mesmeric appeal to world leaders,

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In 2002, I travelled to Sedan in northern France to watch a match against Lens that featured some of the Senegal players likely to represent their country in the opening match of that year’s World Cup against France.

Afterwards I wrote: “If Dakar-born Patrick Vieira were playing for the country of his birth, Senegal would have a real shout at springing the World Cup’s first upset.” I was wrong, of course: Senegal beat the then World Cup-holders,

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