Football's modern day circus could serve an even higher role

Show Blattism the Red Card

For those of us who remember Chelsea as a yo-yo club and Manchester City as whipping boys with a penchant for the drop, these are strange days indeed.

Money buys success but little else. 

There's much wrong with the modern game. Still, for all the ugliness of £300k a week loanees and corrupt governing bodies, football does spread the tabernacle of peace among all the dwellers on earth.

And let us say Amen! 

It literally crowds the senses across digital media taking attentions away from war and pestilence everywhere its syndicated.

The word Messi must cross more cultural and language boundaries than any other. 

Football's size in commercial terms, it's power for our attention and disproportional importance make it more "real" than it used to be. 

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The proof lies in any news report you see at 10 o'clock. Next to the reporter in the warzone or refugee camp will be five hungry children staring out at you, three wearing Barcelona and Manchester United shirts. Hollywood has nothing, nothing on the power of football.

Is American soft power declining? Yeah, it started with Abramovich buying into London.

But the more money in the game, the more fragile it becomes. How can it keep growing? Won't it stagnate and start to look stale if the money flatlines? The growth is unsustainable. There's a tendency to tinkering. Football's governing bodies will mess it up. Civilisation usually ends in self-destruction. It'll be trashed just to be rebuilt again.

Can he phone a friend? Not sure.

But such is it's growing cultural power, we're left with a huge deficit of quality leadership. Where are the world class politicians that could gear football to a higher level? Blatter and Platini dither and piddle around its edges. 

What unites people more than anything else? It starts with World and ends with Cup. It starts with Champions and ends with League.

Football's constituency is wider than religion. How about a role for the Beautiful Game in the United Nations? 

Maybe Bill Shankly will be proved right - one day.