C-Shield money missing, newspaper criticises generalisations, PSG to get Alexis, Guinea foul.

By Sir Hardly Anyone.

First the serious bit.

It is now two months since the Community Shield match raised money (we don’t know how much, but it should have been a lot) for the families and survivors of the Grenfell Tower disaster.  And still there is not a word on where the money has gone.  The suspicion is rising that it is being used to prop up the FA’s bank account.

Of course that is just a suspicion from the suspicious people at Untold, but that abject failure of the FA even to mention the money, and the equally abject failure of the media and the rest of football to pick up on the scandal speaks volumes about football in England.

I know this story bores some people, but there are a million other sites you can read about football and they’re not running it.  We’re going to stay with this until we get an answer to how the money was spent, and why it is taking so long to get it delivered.

Of course we know that all international football stinks but the absolute rule in the media is that this can only be said when it does NOT apply to the UK nations.   So there is coverage of the earth shattering revelation that Equatorial Guinea has been expelled from the 2019 Women’s World Cup for using fake documents.  But nothing about the missing Grenfell Tower money.

Mind you I suspect they only ran the Guinea story to have the headline

Fifa cries foul over Equatorial Guinea

Guinea  – Foul (geddit?)

Two players will serve 10-match international bans for using forged documents and the football federation was fined £78,000.   Still no news on Untold’s bid to have the FA ejected from Fifa for being incapable of recognising corruption when it is staring them in the face though.

Fifa previously banned Equatorial Guinea’s women from the 2020 Olympic qualifiers after two players were found to have passports and birth certificates that didn’t match.  I think the lesson here is that although Fifa is corrupt, if you don’t pay them enough you’ll need to make sure you don’t make simple mistakes.

In fact either the world is picking on Eqat Guin or else the administrators there are incredibly inept at this sort of thing.  The country’s women’s team were disqualified from the 2012 London Olympics for fielding an ineligible player and the men’s national team had points deducted in 2013 when it was noticed that none of the team was born in Equatorial Guinea.  I think they claimed their grandmothers all gave birth in the spiritual homeland before trotting off back to Brazil.

Moving on, moving on, the Independent has a nice headline today with

“Seven way-too-early sweeping generalisations about the Premier League season so far”

Certainly the notion of any national media organisation actually admitting that the media is full of rather silly sweeping generalisations is quite a radical step forwards, so maybe there is hope for us all yet.

The story suggests this is a good time for “Some wild, sweeping, far-too-early generalisations that are absolutely, definitely, 100 per cent going to play out just as they have done so far for the rest of the season.”

One thinks perhaps they’ve been reading Untold with language like that.  And indeed a couple of the generalisations relate to predictions we made before the start of the season: “Liverpool’s top-four hopes are already fading”, and “The Wembley curse will derail Tottenham’s title charge.”

Of course they are right, it is far too early to be sure, but “early indications” suggest we might have been right.  And there is a difference between a reasoned prediction based on past events and a generalisation – although I am not too sure the Indy knows what it is.

I suspect the Indy’s football section must have a new editor, because they are also saying, “Tonight was a night of national realisation: England really are bad.”  No blaming foreigners who don’t understand how to play the game.  Quite a step forward.

Indeed even the retired admirals and colonels who read the Telegraph are being told much the same stuff with headlines like

Bored spectators, paper planes and early exits – something is seriously wrong with this England team

Not to mention…

Empty seats at Wembley.  Are fans falling out of love with watching England?

Moving on, Uefa have got off its backside for a moment it seems, as the Telegraph also tell us that “Uefa charge Spartak Moscow after fans make monkey chants during  Uefa Youth League game with Liverpool.”  Will they act in the World Cup?  It seems unlikely.

There is also a very sad story in the Daily Mail.  Juan Mata set up a scheme that asked PL footballers to donate 1% of their salary to Common Goal, a charity for the underprivileged.   Apparently the response has been underwhelming.

Finally it appears from a story in the Daily Mail (a newspaper that thinks the UK Prime Minister had a good party conference) that “Paris Saint-Germain are working on fulfilling Neymar’s ‘wish’ and securing a summer deal for Arsenal forward Alexis Sanchez.”

Yep, FFP really is a dead donkey, as they say in the newspaper industry.

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