Terrorist attacks, like the one on the Togo team in Cabinda, always raise more questions than answers.
For me the most important question is one the administrators of football and sport in general must answer: what part did they play in this tragedy and what can they do to make sure it never happens again?
Encouraging home grown players is football’s equivalent of motherhood and apple pie. You will find nobody against it. Yet no debate, at least in England, could be more absurdly framed.
Roberto Mancini’s arrival at Manchester City and Mark Hughes’ departure have produced very predictable responses of outrage that Mancini should have been headhunted in this way.
So you thought hosting the World Cup was just a series of (possibly) great football matches? Think again. FIFA has made it clear to all countries bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups that they must agree to a host of conditions which seem far removed from the beautiful game.
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We were there to watch the World Cup draw.
But I spent a fair bit of time in South Africa talking about FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s ambitions for a fourth term, including with FIFA movers and shakers.
I have never been able to understand why football’s administrators, who make such extravagant claims on behalf of the game, have not been able to come to terms with the modern world.
The World Cup draw in South Africa had all the razzmatazz you would expect from such occasions and some. Not every draw gets Nelson Mandela, albeit on video. And quite right too that the Gandhi of our time was there.
David Triesman finds himself in the position not dissimilar to Prime Ministers: more popular abroad than at home. But this happened to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair towards the end of their long reign. It has happened to Triesman barely two years in as FA chairman and just as he faces his greatest test leading England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup.