By David Owen
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November 25 - It has been a wretched couple of months for the England 2018-2022 World Cup bid – and that was before today's bombshell disclosure that Sir Dave Richards, the Premier League chairman, has left the board.
I - and I'm sure many others who genuinely want the World Cup to come back to England - have looked on with mounting exasperation as Warnergate was succeeded by Mulberrygate to the accompaniment of various bewildering comings and goings of key personnel.
And now this.
Before our very eyes, seemingly, what should have been the bid to beat has degenerated into a lurching minuet of false steps.
I would argue, indeed, that the mistakes started pretty much at the beginning, with the sequence of events that needlessly antagonised Peter Hargitay.
Hargitay, a former adviser of FIFA President Sepp Blatter, has the sort of reputation for making things happen at the hub of world football that communications guru Mike Lee has acquired within the Olympic Movement.
If Hargitay is working against you in a contest such as this, you make things twice as difficult for yourselves as they otherwise would be - and he is now working for what is shaping up into a canny and well-resourced Australian bid that I would rate as a definite dark horse, maybe even more than that, in the 2022 race.
When I spoke to him this week, Hargitay was surprisingly charitable about Lord Triesman, the hapless England 2018-2022 bid chairman under whose leadership this has happened.
"I sincerely feel that Triesman is getting a rough ride because nobody has so far seen anything of the England bid," he told me.
"Without knowing what the bid really entails, he is getting hit over the head left, right and centre.
"From a purely human point of view, I feel for the guy.
"He deserves to be treated with a certain level of respect."
Loath as I generally am to join in the hitting, I simply don't see how Triesman can survive this latest blow, nor should he.
I never really felt it was in the bid’s best interests to be headed by the same man who is FA chairman.
After all, while it is legitimate - and I would say necessary - for the FA chairman to keep close tabs on the debt burdens of England's leading football clubs, it is easy to appreciate how this might be counterproductive for a bid that needs to lean heavily on Premier League support if it is to succeed, particularly if that FA chairman is also the bid leader.
As the bid's figurehead, I also feel that Triesman needs now to take responsibility for its sorry state.
That said, it will not come as news to anyone who has been watching the race that mutterings about the need to replace the chairman have been going on for some time.
England 2018-2022's "Cassani moment" is the accepted shorthand, in reference to the London 2012 Olympic bid leader, whose perfectly-timed baton change with Lord Coe paved the way for that bid's come-from-behind victory.
The problem is English football simply does not possess a Lord Coe (nor, it has to be said, has Triesman so far manifested the slightest inclination to depart).
English football does, as I keep being reminded, have a Gary Lineker (pictured) - but I am long enough in the tooth to remember that Lineker's name was raised prominently as a possible bid leader in the early days of the campaign two years ago.
If it did not happen then, I don't see why it should happen now.
In any case, I don't think the Leicester legend is what England 2018-2022 needs, at least as bid chairman.
The country has the good fortune to possess the most iconic footballer who ever drew breath - David Beckham - and a very potent weapon he could still be, posing for photographs with football VIPs' families, signing designer T-shirts, that sort of thing.
(To anyone who doubts the importance of such gestures, I would say that they should have seen how usually haughty International Olympic Committee members fawned over Pelé earlier this year in the Copenhagen Opera House.)
England is also imbued with a formidable coterie of knowledgeable behind-the-scenes fixers capable of steering the bid's figureheads to the places where they can be used to maximum effect.
Into this category I would put David Dein, the former Arsenal stalwart, Jane Bateman, the bid's director of Campaign Operations, Geoff Thompson, the former FA chairman and FIFA Executive Committee member, Andy Anson, the bid's Chief Executive, Richard Caborn, the former Sports Minister, whose personal chemistry with Blatter ought to be a key asset, and of course Richards himself.
What the bid has hitherto lacked is a world figure capable of garnering respect from the 24 FIFA Executive Committee members who will make the critical decision in December next year, and who would in turn treat them with respect.
Having racked my brains, I have come up with one name who has time on his hands and who, I think, could make a good stab at rescuing the bid, operating in tandem with Beckham – and, yes, Alan Hubbard, possibly Sir Alex Ferguson - under the guidance of those football fixers I mentioned.
I never thought I would say this, but step forward former UK Prime Minister and hero of Singapore - Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.
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David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who 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 last year's Beijing Olympics. An archive of Owen’s material may be found by Twitter users at www.twitter.com/dodo938.
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