Football has lost all its innocent joy and fallen into the grubby hands of World Cup grifters, fixers and crooks
I’m not one to boast, but we have a World Cup winner in the family. I’m not talking about that over-priced fandango that starts in the Americas tomorrow.
No, victory was sealed in the Cavendish Primary tournament (under-six group) which took place on Saturday.
Flags of many nations hung from railings around a school playing field – a game attempt to brand this as a world cup. German wurst grilled appetisingly on a barbecue on the playground.
And parents and grandparents paced the touchlines shouting encouragement as their little darlings chased the ball around in the inevitable drizzle.
I haven’t enjoyed a day’s sport so much for ages. The highlight, of course, was when our grandson Oliver got to lift the plastic replica Jules Rimet trophy with his “Spitfires” teammates. They took it in turn to be Bobby Moore in 1966.
It was pure, innocent joy. The same cannot be said of the real World Cup, which kicks off with Mexico versus South Africa in Mexico City tomorrow evening. This will be the start of a grubby, unseemly attempt to part millions of genuine football fans from their cash.
Burrow beneath the shimmering surface of this extravaganza and you will find grifters and fixers and unashamed crooks scrabbling like street urchins for a handful of coins tossed into the dirt by a passing rich man.
I’ll watch England’s – and Scotland’s – progress, of course I will. I wish them both every success. But at the same time, I shall be thinking of how the beautiful game has been disfigured by the money poured into it by fans and television deals.
After the school tournament, I watched a colour version on Channel 4 of the 1966 final won by England and particularly their hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst. This too was refreshing: football as it was meant to be played.
There was proper, brave tackling from skipper Moore and the towering Jack Charlton; Alan Ball and Nobby Stiles harried and nagged in midfield; while Martin Peters (ten years ahead of his time, according to his manager) roamed elegantly to create chances for Hurst and his strike partner Roger Hunt.
This was football from another age, almost another universe. There was the odd testy exchange with the referee but no one got in his face and he wasn’t swarmed by a gang of players insisting on a penalty.
No one fell to the ground writhing in mock agony in an attempt to have a rival booked or sent off; there was no wrestling pantomime in the penalty area with players grappling each other to the ground as a corner kick was taken.
The match was played in the proper spirit of football and afterwards there were handshakes between the victors and the vanquished before, I dare say, some very serious celebrations began.
The players were less pressurised, more grounded. You might remember the exchange between Geoff Hurst and England manager Alf Ramsey after one match when they were already World Cup heroes.
As Hurst left for home, he turned to Ramsey and said: “See you at the next game, Alf.”
Ramsey replied: “If selected, Geoffrey, if selected.”
It is hard to pinpoint when the rot set in but by 2015 football was as corrupt as Las Vegas when it was run by the mafia don Bugsy Siegel.
Chosen to be general secretary of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) in 1981, Sepp Blatter was a Swiss businessman who came to wield immense power in football.
Blatter was elected president of FIFA in 1993 and turned the game into a cash cow through shrewd manipulation of football administrators in Africa and Asia. He was long suspected of being corrupt but despite the attentions of the FBI, no one ever proved it.
He and Michel Platini, a great player before he turned to administration and became a protégé of Blatter, were cleared in a Swiss court of fraud, forgery and misappropriation of FIFA funds.
Now the sport is run by Gianni Infantino, who is about to oversee the World Cup for the first time. The tournament is expected to bring almost £10 billion into FIFA’s coffers.
Infantino, 56, is a Swiss-Italian and a lawyer by training. He took over after the Blatter regime was discredited and one of his first significant acts was to raise the number of teams participating in the World Cup from 32 to 48, playing 104 matches.
Another was to raise his own pay from £1.3 million in 2016 to £2.5 million last year – with a bonus of £2.1 million on top of that.
No one is suggesting he is corrupt but he certainly gravitates towards power and money. This World Cup is being staged in the United States, Mexico and Canada. When Donald Trump failed in his ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Infantino invented a similar accolade from FIFA and awarded it to the U.S. President.
Trump has called Infantino the King of Soccer. But uneasy lies the head that wears this crown, as Infantino is discovering.
He has faced claims of greed and exploitation as the cheapest ticket prices to watch England’s first match in Arlington, Texas, were set at £524 – prompting Arsenal fan Keir Starmer to voice his own outrage.
“Football fans should come first, that’s why I’m urging FIFA to take action to ensure people buying World Cup tickets are not ripped off,” said the Prime Minister.
“It is unacceptable for fans to be exploited for wanting to support their country on the biggest stage.”
Extortionate prices have left many of the tickets unsold, yet none of this has put off Millwall fan David Balster. The Times reported this week that Balster, 66, from Herne Hill, South London, has already spent £10,000 to follow England across the U.S.
And that doesn’t count tickets or beer (£12.55 a pop in the stadium).
The football had better be really, really good.
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Students and vice-chancellors have joined forces to lobby for more taxpayers’ cash to be poured into universities. They claim the Government makes the smallest financial contribution to universities of any nation.
They might be right – given their roles, you would hope they are – but they miss an inconvenient truth. Funding to universities is spread too thinly because there are too many of them, as well as too many students who don’t have the brains to be there.
And don’t get me started on vice-chancellors, who pay themselves an average of almost £400,000 for running a Russell Group university. The vice-chancellor of Oxford raked in £666,000 in 2024-25.
Broadcaster and former Sunday Express political editor and columnist Julia Hartley-Brewer went to Magdalen College, one of the richest in Oxford, where she gained a 2:1 in philosophy, politics and economics. (“I wish I’d known how easy it was to get a First,” she once told me.)
Like graduates from most universities she gets an occasional begging letter from her alma mater. Her response? “I write back and tell them to sell a painting,” she said.
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A style of headline writing that didn’t really exist in my day has been enthusiastically taken up by today’s newspapers. And it is beginning to irritate me.
This sub-genre (see what I just did there?) typically vaunts the writer’s credentials. It might start with a statement such as: “I’m a doctor/flight attendant/weight loss expert. Then it goes on to debunk the latest theory or fad or rule in that particular discipline.
The Daily Mail, particularly online, loves this style of headline. Now the heavies are joining in too.
In Times 2 yesterday, I read: “I’m a surgeon and have prostate cancer. I don’t want screening”; “Is the Cotswolds property boom over? I live there and I hope so”; and “I’m Sikh, my parents immigrated to Britain. Here’s what I’d say to J D Vance”.
All perfectly legitimate and topical stories written by people who know of what they speak. But it is lazy headline writing and lazy chief-subbing – and if it is niggling me and my wife, I imagine it is having a similar effect on other readers too.
I’m a night editor and I think these headlines are tiresome.
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A story about notes that Princess Diana wrote to the Sixties film star Terence Stamp had me wondering – as it meant me to – whether they were more than just lunch companions.
The notes were mildly flirty, sometimes written on cards that were a bit racy: one showed a female breast and another a couple in bed making love under the heading “Why did God invent SEX?..”
The answer inside was: “So that married people do something at least twice a year.”
It was 1991 and only months later, Andrew Morton was to reveal that Diana’s marriage to Charles, then Prince of Wales, was little more than a sham. Was she dropping hints?
At the time, Diana was 30 and by common consent one of the most beautiful women in the world. She was also blessed, biographers suggest, with a large libido.
Stamp was 53 and by common consent one of the most handsome and charismatic screen actors of his generation. He was famous for affairs with actress Julie Christie and model Jean Shrimpton.
So, it’s not out of the question, is it?
The notes, owned by Stamp’s estate, are up for auction at Bonham’s this month.
RICHARD DISMORE
10 June 2026
