If you want any idea of how football has totally corrupted the world we live in, don't visit Switzerland and delve into the myre that is FIFA. Don't even bother worrying about the million pound a week salaries at the top if the game.
No, turn to a club that was set up to challenge the status quo. Turn to United FC of Manchester, set up by disenchanted Manchester Utd fans when their clubs were taken over in an LBO by an American family.
This evening this club, which is now in tier six of English football and rising, held a game against Portugese club Benfica at their new stadium (fifty years ago Man U played Benfica in the final of the European Cup).
They were inaugurating their new ground, Broadhurst Park, which has a capacity of 4400 and cost a breathtaking £5.5m, the vast majority of which came from public coffers.
In a country where we have thousands of sports grounds yet another has been built for the benefit of a few thousand people. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadhurst_Park
As a soccer coach once said, football isn't a matter if life or death, it's more important than that. And it is a panacea for the people, just as gladiators once were...
Another saying is that you get the leaders that you deserve. But why do we all, especially TV viewers who have to pay for the massive rights packages, have to subsidise them ?