As was explained to them in the politest terms, there were a lot of grounds for complaint about FFA and it was a free country where people were entitled to their opinions.

But FFA didn't unplug its proverbial wire. Instead (and I have this on very good authority), a complaint was allegedly made to FIFA about me, as well as another football media identity who was sticking in its craw.

Yes, dangerous little old me and my dangerous opinions.

The privileged individuals who are running the game in this country would do well to bear in mind the fact that when I started out writing about football in the late 1990s and early 2000s I was an active and enthusiastic proponent of creating FFA and bringing Frank Lowy back into the game.

Many meetings were had between myself and a cast of some of Australia's biggest football identities – Robbie Slater, Bonita Mersiades, Andy Harper, even the very same Kyle Patterson who now defends Ben Buckley for a living – at The Grape Escape in Milsons Point, which resulted in a direct approach to Lowy himself both by phone to a hotel room in Tel Aviv and in person to his office at Westfield Towers on William Street in Sydney in 2001.

The brilliant Mersiades presented Lowy with a six-point plan for the resuscitation of our ailing game and later went on to become one of his most trusted confidantes at FFA.

So for a long time, even through the disastrous World Cup bid, I have been in Lowy's corner and wanting him to really come into his own. Like many people, I thought he'd be the game's "white knight", the man to deliver us a vibrant national league and bring an end to all the skulduggery and infighting.

But eight years on from the Crawford Report in 2003 and six years on from the dissolution of the Australian Soccer Association in 2005 to make way for FFA, how much has really changed in the Australian game?

In truth, apart from the triumph of consecutive World Cup qualification by our heroic Socceroos and the Asian Cup win by the Matildas (the stuff that's contained on the pitch), not much at all.

Despite the window dressing of an anodyne new league and Asian Football Confederation membership, FFA isn't a self-sustaining business.

It runs at a loss. It puts out the begging bowl to Canberra. It squanders taxpayers' money. It's not transparent. It squeezes out independent thinkers. It has shown an inability to properly run the A-League. It doesn't exercise due-diligence. It doesn't understand tribalism. It has alienated a huge segment of the football-supporting population with its sneering disregard for the game's history. It still slugs mums and dads on registration fees while fattening the pay packets of its non-performing executives. It has denied fans a reasonable level of free-to-air coverage. It couldn't handle the challenge of expansion. Its allocation of AFC Champions League places is stuck at two. It screwed up with the sales pitch for Australia 2022 and wouldn't tolerate journalists who dared question its bid strategy. (Here's a tip: if you don't want critical examination and normal checks and balances, don't pay for it with our money.)

We need another bloody government review for good reason.

So where to from here?

In an ideal world, Ben Buckley would be given the boot, Lowy would dig into his own sizeable pockets and donate the contracts of ten international-quality marquees to the league (failing that, he should retire) and Warwick Smith, the man leading the government inquiry in Canberra, would bypass advice from within the current administration and consult some of the people who have been made collateral for not towing the company line.

There are too many good people – genuine emotional "stakeholders" and not pragmatic, opportunistic Johnny-Come-Latelys – with wisdom, experience, insight and expertise for them collectively to be ignored altogether.

The A-League should be made a separate entity from FFA, the Asian Cup Organising Committee for the 2015 event in Australia should install a partly independent board and the FFA board should be more democratic and reflective of the stakeholders – not Lowy's business network.

These are small reforms and just the beginning of what needs to be done. Because it remains a noble mission and football is still the most beautiful and meaningful game of all.

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I want to thank all my readers for the time I've been here at SBS. I've lost count of the number of columns – around 500 – I've written since October 2007 when I came over from Fox Sports and always enjoyed the spirited debates and respected the vociferous disagreements (hey, you can't please everybody).

I'm also deeply grateful for some friendships I've made with people inside the game: Socceroos new and old, coaches, officials, agents, broadcasters, journalists and, above all, fans.

I've started my own website jessefink.com.au and welcome you to come across and join the discussion on football and all sorts of other topics (music, fashion, food and wine, politics and current affairs) that interest me.

Thanks for your time. And keep fighting the good fight.

If FFA refuses to clearly delineate a separation of powers between itself from the A-League the question must be asked: What exactly is it doing to protect the domestic competition's stars from the raids of predatory overseas clubs?

This is an issue as old as the hills for the domestic game but nothing ever seems to change.

An endless procession of players have been lost to the leagues of South Korea, Japan, the Middle East, even Indonesia. And FFA has stood by, gormlessly, powerless, because it refuses to countenance any other thinking on how to add "value" to the A-League other than what is doing right now: which is a fat load of nothing.

All the fancy marketing and hyperbolic press releases is not going to change the incontrovertible fact that the A-League has now lost its best player for the amount of money Frank Lowy takes home in a couple of weeks.

FIFA, meanwhile, is trying to win back some cred by threatening the Bahrain Football Association with expulsion from the world body over the jailing of national-team veteran Mohamed Hubail, who has been sent down for two years in some squalid hellhole for having the integrity and courage to participate in democracy protests in the kingdom in April. His brother Alaa is also due to be sentenced.

But what has taken FIFA so long? Why has the AFC said nothing at all?

It shouldn't have required the United Nations to make a statement about the egregious violation of human rights that has been perpetrated against the brothers for FIFA to act.

It was obvious back in April that there was gross political interference taking place in the affairs of the BFA and my good friend James Montague was keeping the brothers' plight in the spotlight for CNN earlier this month.

So why the silence? It's disgusting to digest. As the football correspondent Keir Radnedge explained to Montague: "There was a [FIFA presidential] election around the corner and neither man could afford to upset a royal family which is a powerful player in sport in the region."

And FIFA says politics and football don't mix.

Lastly, I copped some stick for my column on Friday regarding FFA's handling of accusations levelled by Les Murray against Lucas Neill that the Socceroos skipper had led a player rebellion against Pim Verbeek at the 2010 World Cup.

I don't resile from that criticism. I thought FFA's handling of the matter was very poor – just like it was when it dealt with the salary-cap affair. It didn't deal with the crucial issue in both cases with the required focus and forthrightness.

When someone says they can't "recall" an incident happening, it's inviting doubt and further interrogation. Just like Bill Clinton thinking that saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" is going to be the end of it.

Why didn't FFA just say it didn't happen, period?

I've also been accused of ignoring Murray's culpability in the saga.

I have no view on whether Murray is right or wrong (he seems sure about his sources) and I haven't spoken to him about it, though I have attempted independently to corroborate his version of events both with the Harry Kewell camp (ie, Bernie Mandic, the man many are accusing of leaking the story, which he categorically denies) and Pim Verbeek himself. Neither man would comment.

If Neill ever makes good of his threat to sue Murray, perhaps the truth will come out in court.

Until then what's 100 per cent clear is that Australian football is riven with conflicts, jealousies and intrigues. On and off the park.

That part, sadly, never changes.

Just like the fantastic players who light up our game and then pack up their things and are gone.

The fans are right to be feeling very sad this morning.

Bernie Mandic, Harry Kewell's manager, has been widely tipped. But when I asked Bernie what his take was on Murray's account versus Moore's account, he uncharacteristically played a straight bat: "I don't think it's appropriate for me to make any comments on or off the record about things like this."

So no joy there.

What is odd, though, is how FFA chose to handle this PR crisis. Rather than just use a sentence to say emphatically and categorically it didn't happen we were treated to Ben Buckley's estimation of Neill's captaincy.

"Football Federation Australia CEO Ben Buckley has today endorsed Lucas Neill as 'one of the finest Socceroo captains of all time'," guffed FFA's head of corporate affairs and communications, Kyle Patterson in a statement released on Thursday.

"'As the captain of the Qantas Socceroos, Lucas Neill has demonstrated exceptional leadership over the past five years,' said Buckley. 'He stands tall as an Australian sporting leader of the highest quality.'

"Buckley has dismissed reports in today’s press, which allege that Lucas Neill countermanded instructions delivered by the Qantas Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek prior to the FIFA World Cup match against Germany.

"'No one involved with the Socceroos in South Africa can recall any incident with the slightest resemblance to what has been described in today’s press,' he said."

"Countermanded"? And I get called verbose. "Recall"? A term that only invites doubt and gossip.

So rather than handle the issue effectively and defuse speculation, FFA has in fact aggravated it.

Why was it left for Neill to go on Channel Ten and later Fox Sports to deny the allegation? Why wasn't an official, FFA-endorsed comment from the captain released at the first whiff of controversy and why was the Socceroos "brand", as well as the reputation of the team's former coach, allowed to be knocked around?

Is it a simple case of any publicity is good publicity? For the sport and Murray's book?

In this instance, I'm not so sure on either count.

He's ended up at Brisbane Roar as its general manager of football and I'm sure I speak for everyone in the Australian game when I say they could not have landed a more decent operator.

An ornament to the game and a bloke so unflappably chirpy and mentally resourceful he could commentate on a Marcel Duchamp installation for two hours straight without drawing breath.

Meanwhile Robbie Slater has described Francis Awaritefe's appointment as football director at Melbourne Victory as "an absolutely incredible appointment".

Which is incredible in itself, given Slater's most valuable contribution to the Fox Sports commentary desk has been to repeat the phrase "When you're a striker you've got to bury it" for the past however many years and be rewarded with the privilege of sitting alongside the insightful and always intriguing Mark Bosnich.

I've had my stoushes with Francis – especially over the World Cup bid and my strident criticism of new workmate Kevin Muscat – but he's a smart bloke who, when not being interrupted incessantly by Ned Zelic, can chew your ear off about Barcelona and the complexities of technical football.

The fact he has been entrusted with the job of creating a club philosophy and culture and handling young players is a vote of confidence in his ability and his personality.

I wish him well.

The most interesting signing, though, of the past 24 hours has been Melbourne Heart's acquisition of Brazilian maestro Fred from Major League Soccer club DC United.

Fred was the most exciting player in the A-League back in 2006/07 and one of those small group of players that people still talked about long after they were gone.

His return, right in the heart of his former stomping ground, is a bold gambit by Heart and a strong declaration of intent: it wants to become the biggest football club in Australia's sporting capital.

Will it be a better acquisition than Victory's proposed signing of Harry Kewell?

Given the financial parameters being bandied about – an 80:20 "additional revenue" split (80 to Kewell, 20 to the club) – it's clear the no-frills coaching appointments made at Victory are paving the way to make that deal happen and make it beneficial to both parties. But a target of 10,000 new members is ambitious. Especially when it hinges on a player who's gone in for more body-shop repairs than Steve Austin.

Fred isn't so combustible and he's a creator rather than a finisher. I think it's a more astute buy, even though Kewell is a more enduring and bankable star.

Whatever your view, the fact two players of such quality could be running around in the A-League very soon is a great positive in a week of very concerning headlines that have yet to be adequately explained.

That we have to wait another three months before a ball is kicked is disappointing. But at least we can look forward to it. Unlike the next round of bad news off the field.

A baker's dozen of them at last count.

Disgruntled, embittered or just plain honest with a story to tell? That should be for an independent investigator to assess in the wake of the allegations carried in the Fairfax press over the weekend that Sydney FC had breached the salary cap in season 2009/10 and its violation had been known and effectively swept under the carpet by FFA.

Football's own answer to the Melbourne Storm fiasco. We all agree: pretty serious stuff.

It is well and good for FFA to say "there is no substance to the claim" and "reject the suggestion [it] is not serious about policing the salary cap", as chief executive Ben Buckley chirruped in response to the allegations made by The Age's version of Woodward and Bernstein: Baker and McKenzie.

Yes, the same reporters who raised all those supposedly pernicious allegations about FFA's World Cup bid and were threatened with apocalyptic legal writs. (They came to nothing.)

But what do such words amount to when FFA has not adequately addressed the most serious allegation in the entire report?

That former A-League senior operations manager Matt Phelan was allegedly told he "should adopt a different approach to the salary cap review that would ensure Sydney FC would have no case to answer" and refused.

Someone else may have gone and ensured the club had no case to answer, as per the alleged request, giving FFA and Buckley the opportunity of saying Sydney met the requirements of the cap.

It doesn't change the crucial information Phelan was allegedly asked to do something corrupt , said no, and whoever was "assigned" in his place may have done what they were told to get Sydney compliant.

If true, what did that unknown person do, exactly? How did Sydney fit under the cap?

As Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) boss Brendan Schwab has said: "Is it possible to orchestrate some process whereby the salary cap could be cheated? Of course there is."

So more reason for all relevant documents should to be handed over to a completely independent body for proper investigation, as my SBS colleague Craig Foster urged in his newspaper column this week. At the very least the alleged breach should be another matter investigated by the Smith Review.

Sorry, FFA. Another press release won't assuage our doubts. This time the "football family" wants not just answers but the truth.

It shouldn't be for you but for a third party to determine what exactly that is.

Let's bring it in and be done with the dreadful calls and gross injustices, such as Frank Lampard's disallowed goal against Germany at South Africa 2010.

But then along comes James de Mellow in the British football magazine When Saturday Comes with a bold new argument, remarkable for its novelty.

"In fact, a relegation decided on a dodgy decision would actually save supporters money in the form of less expensive ticket prices in a lower division."

Let's hope it was written in jest. Yes, that's right. Save your tears and outrage, fans of struggling clubs whose dream is to play in the Premier League, because ultimately you're better off seeing your team run around in the Championship because your wallet won't take such a beating on season tickets.

Extraordinary. The purists (or antediluvians), should really just accept the inevitable. Get with the program and move on – like the majority of fans want. It's not 1863. It's 2011. Embrace change.

Something the International Olympic Committee has being consciously trying to do since the Salt Lake City scandal and reaffirmed this week by launching an investigation into Joao Havelange, FIFA president from 1974 to 1998, current FIFA honorary president and member of the IOC since 1963.

A big fish. A very big fish.

Most recently in Andrew Jennings's explosive documentary FIFA: Football's Shame, aired on the BBC's Panorama program, Havelange was alleged to been the recipient of a $1 million "bung" in 1997 from the defunct marketing and television rights company International Sport and Leisure (ISL) – with the knowledge of FIFA president Sepp Blatter (he was then general secretary to Havelange's president) .

"Mr Havelange got a $1 million-dollar bung in 1997. Sepp Blatter knew about it. He did nothing," Jennings said in the program. "And 14 years later he’s still doing nothing."

These are not new stories. There is the "senior official in football" in Jennings's 2006 book Foul! The Secret World Of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals whose name appeared on a cheque for 1 million francs that accidentally arrived in Blatter's office. It forms the first chapter of the book.

It also features in Jennings's 2006 BBC documentary The Beautiful Bung, in which Jennings confronts Blatter at a press conference (he wasn't banned by FIFA at that stage) about the alleged ISL bribe and is told: "I do not enter into discussion here in this press conference and this is totally out of the matter we like to discuss today."

Jennings also corners Blatter outside a press conference. He asks: "Do you know which football officials took payments from the ISL marketing company? Blatter's response: "I don’t answer these questions."

In the same documentary, Jennings says: "Who was this enormous bribe addressed to? [Two FIFA insiders] told me it was to the man then at the top – FIFA president, Joao Havelange."

In Foul!, Jennings calls it "a ticking timebomb, waiting to go off". Now, belatedly, it has.

What's extraordinary about the IOC's action is that it comes when FIFA itself, the governing body that technically speaking should be leading from the front in the fight against corruption in football (it certainly has enough committees to call on, of dubious efficacy, and Blatter made it a crucial plank for his re-election campaign), has still done nothing about the charges against Havelange. (After all, the Brazilian, now 95, was taking bungs in his capacity as a football official, not as an IOC member.)

Just like FIFA has effectively done nothing when it comes to goal-line technology. It makes all the right noises, saying it's testing this and testing that, even when there is perfectly suitable technology under its collective noses, but at the end of the day it's just stalling. Buying time.

Something that appears to have finally caught up with Havelange. And we have Jennings and the IOC to thank, not FIFA, for bringing this moment to pass. The bomb looks like it's finally gone off.

It's been known for more than a week that Lowy was in hospital and a text message is circulating from a football official claiming to know where he being treated and to having seen first-hand the full Lowy clan visiting the 80-year-old.

It is of no import. The man is entitled to his privacy. I'm sure everyone in the football community will share my best wishes to Lowy and the Lowy family and hope he makes a speedy recovery from this health scare. May he continue having a long and prosperous life.

What is of import is the position he holds at FFA and how the federation will be placed if he cannot continue in the role.

It is not something that has become an issue just because of the events of this week. It has been an issue discussed before here and elsewhere and it is an issue that Westfield itself, the global business empire he created with John Saunders from the back of a delivery van in the 1950s, successfully resolved in March.

But to date FFA has said nothing, indicated nothing, about life after Lowy. Has it got a succession plan?

As FFA has received a significant amount of taxpayers' dollars over the course of its eight years and every registered player contributes to FFA revenue, as fans, as stakeholders, as members of the "football family", we are well entitled to ask what the future might be and how the FFA would handle a Lowy exit.

Lowy has made it plain he wants to be re-elected as chairman at FFA's AGM and should he return to his job, his "passion", he will be effectively rubber-stamped. However, what happens if he cannot?

The position is not a FIFA Congress-style situation, where all the member associations have a vote for the presidency. While the member federations in Australia's case can vote for the elected directors, FFA's board directors choose the chairman.

Apart from Lowy, there are six directors: deputy chairman Brian Schwartz, Jack Reilly, Ron Walker, Phil Wolanski, Moya Dodd and 2010 addition, the National Australia Bank's Joseph Healy. (NAB is the banker of Westfield and FFA.)

Schwartz and Wolanski are very close to the chairman. Schwartz is deputy chairman of the Westfield board.

Both were appointed on the creation of FFA's first board and have remained there ever since but will have to be re-elected at this year's AGM (the category of "first" directors is being dissolved under the FFA constitution).

Dodd and Walker were elected at the 2007 AGM and will be eligible for re-election in 2013. Reilly and Healy were appointed. The constitution fixes the number of appointed directors at three and the maximum size of the board is nine.

Interestingly, directors are ineligible if they have worked at FFA or state federation, been a member of a standing committee, or retained an "official position" in football for the previous two years before being nominated.

So is there a chance of someone completely divorced from the board and its circle of influence coming in to crash the party? A reformist chairman?

As one well-placed insider told me this week: "In short, it is very difficult to get a 'reform' candidate nominated, let alone elected as chairman."

Ben Buckley's name has been mentioned around water coolers as a possible interim solution. Make of that what you will.

I'm not convinced he would have the same gravitas and authority as Lowy or have the faculties to take the game forward at such a critical juncture and, importantly, he would only be eligible for the chairmanship were he made managing director of FFA as well as his current position of chief executive.

But one thing is certain: if someone does step into Lowy's shoes, he (or she) is going to have to hit the ground running.

Can we add exhibition games, TV revenue, shirt sales, commercial/media opportunities, image rights, bobbleheads?

Becks' deal with Los Angeles Galaxy is a complex beast and anything involving Kewell coming to Sydney FC, Melbourne Victory or Newcastle Jets (three known clubs linked to the Australia star) would be as intricately plotted as a Stieg Larsson novel. Kewell's agent, Bernie Mandic, doesn't miss a trick.

It's not about the money is the message from Mandic, but it is. Don't be fooled by the tweets of journos and officials friendly with the Kewell camp.

Just as considerable a factor as altruism, lifestyle considerations, the pull of home or anything else.

Mandic is cognisant of his star client's value, even if it is diminishing. There has to be something in it for both him and Kewell, especially when it's the last contract they're likely to do together.

Kewell has been Mandic's nest egg, his great project, in many respects his professional life's work. Any manager worth his salt would be looking to get the best possible deal in such a situation. There's no shame in it.

Talk of the Middle East is just that: talk. A negotiating tactic. If Kewell can earn two or three times the amount of money in the Middle East than he would earn in Australia, good luck to him. Off to Qatar you go, Harry. But we know he doesn't really want to go there and most people wouldn't – when offered the choice between Australia and Doha or Dubai.

He has a strong media presence here that transcends the code. His roots are here. He's working on a book. There are lots of potential post-football opportunities for him and his family in Australia that will keep Mandic very busy. I'm picturing Sheree Murphy on Dancing with the Stars already and lots of Danny Weidler and Ray Martin love-ins.

But the strategy limits where Harry's likely to end up.

Newcastle is too provincial a club and has positioned itself as a "family"-friendly operation with attendant reductions on ticket prices. It has already raised doubts about how they would pair up.

Sydney FC's Scott Barlow says "if we do talk we'd have to be pretty comfortable with the financial make-up of the deal and there would be a need to make sure it is right for the club". Which would appear to rule out the Harbour City when strong rumours are going around that co-owner Paul Ramsay is not totally happy with the way things are run at the club and may be looking to bail out altogether.

A possible ownership void and the arrival of an expensive new marquee could spell significant headaches for all concerned.

Which leaves Melbourne Victory as the natural destination for Kewell's services. It is "very keen" by its own admission, has easily the strongest support base in the A-League (gate receipts – tick), the most scope for instantly putting new bums on seats (membership drive – tick) and is a club with a stated ambition to become a "brand" in the region (all those flow-on benefits – tick).

Becks did it for LA so there's no conceivable reason Kewell can't do it for Victory.

So all power to Kewell, Mandic and anyone else involved in a possible deal. We'd love to see Harry come back to Australia.

But let's cut the crap: money still talks.

Any decisions that require out-of-the-box thinking are thin on the ground at FFA and rarer still are individuals who are prepared to make them.

Don't want to damage that plunging bottom line any more on a bloke whose groin is wonkier than the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

"Matters of contracting marquee players are between clubs and agents," an FFA apparatchik intoned with the expected level of greyness this week. "We have no plans currently to intervene in negotiations between clubs and their potential targets."

We were informed, too, in the same report that "the A-League has regularly considered a centralised marquee system in which the FFA contracts high-class players, then doles them out to appropriate clubs". The very system I have proposed a number of times, loosely modelled on Major League Soccer.

Without the MLS's assistance, players such as David Beckham and Thierry Henry wouldn't be running around American soccer fields, reviving the "brand" and winning over new fans.

It clearly works in the United States – so what is FFA waiting for, exactly? It has a chairman, Frank Lowy, with a personal fortune on par with the GDP of Papua New Guinea.

There's no reason why he can't tip some money into the game, as Philip Anschutz and Lamar Hunt did for the MLS when it was experiencing its own period of trouble. Buy ten Harry Kewells even.

The issue of his chairmanship is a convenient excuse but doesn't wash, as I argued in May when I mentioned his financial rescue of then-Westfield investment Northern Star when he was Westfield chairman in 1989.

If he could dip into his own savings to help Northern Star he can do the same for the A-League.

As an article on The World Game pointed out this week, there's another factor to consider: "With its television rights renewal looming, an A-League with Kewell surely is worth more than one without him." Adding "value" to the A-League. It's what Harold Mitchell has been banging on about but no one at FFA seems to be listening. Even when an opportunity like Kewell has been presented to it on a plate.

That's where the AFL was clever. Throwing all that money at its new Gold Coast and GWS teams, poaching rugby league talent such as Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau and breaking the bank to lure Gary Ablett Jr away from Geelong was simply clever leverage for the TV rights deal. It paid off spectacularly.

Even if Gold Coast and GWS fall over in a heap the AFL has $1.25 billion to mop up its tears and go back to the drawing board.

Kewell would be ideal leverage going into any negotiations over TV rights.

Whatever money was spent on him now would surely be returned many times over with the fat he would add to the final amount negotiated with the FFA's broadcasting partners when the new deal is activated in 2013.

He is a sports star who transcends the code, who is instantly recognisable, loved by people of all ages (including grandmothers – I recently got a signed shirt from Harry for one particularly besotted sexagenarian) and a genuinely nice bloke.

Why wouldn't FFA jump at the chance?

Well, obviously there are issues about where he goes and why and how it is fair to the clubs that miss out. But these are just excuses to not do anything.

Wherever he ends up, whether it be by design or lottery, Kewell's presence in the A-League will be benefiting all clubs.

It's time FFA got serious about making the most of the marquee provision or else give up the game altogether.

The more it stalls, the more the A-League just gets closer to the edge.

Last night in Melbourne, before the friendly between Australia and Serbia, the great former Socceroos coach Rale Rasic was honoured in a simple ceremony by the Serbian Football Federation.

Serbia. Not us. The first man to lead Australia to a World Cup.

Mentor, inspiration and friend to so many in the game. A man generous to a fault with his time and gentlemanly courtesy, as anyone who has come across Rasic will tell you, be they celebrity or "common" fan.

When FFA heard that Rasic was being honoured, it wanted to get involved. All well and good; any PR practitioner worth his or her salt would surmise that if it didn't it'd be on a hiding to nothing from the public should the news filter out. But why did it take the Serbs to spur our game's governing body into action?

For a long time Rasic has been scathing about his treatment by the Australian football authorities, feeling he hasn't been accorded the respect he deserves – and he's right.

Admission to the Hall of Fame in 1999 by the old Soccer Australia is not nearly enough.

I've visited Rasic at his home in Cecil Hills in Sydney's west and sat down with him in his Aladdin's Cave, surrounded by trophies, framed photographs, pennants, medals and assorted paraphernalia from a lifetime in the service of Australian football. There's few people Rasic hasn't come across in his peregrinations. On one of the walls there there's even a picture of him with Bob Marley. Even in his mid 70s, the guy has plenty of street cred.

But then you tally that with the purgatory he has had to endure as a victim of the "old soccer/new football" transition and the scene becomes desperately sad. You can cut the pathos in the air with a knife.

How did it come to this? A man who arrived in Australia in 1962. Who became a citizen in 1967. Who led Australia through its first successful World Cup qualifying campaign in 1973. Who took us to a World Cup in 1974.

If Australian football had its own version of Mount Rushmore, Rasic would be one of the faces carved out of granite.

Rasic told Matthew Hall in Inside Sport magazine in 2005: "The first time I assembled what would become the ’74 team in a hotel, I made sure their dinner was rare beef. The blood was thick. I made the players cut the meat themselves.

"After the meal, I took them all to a meeting and asked how their dinner was. Some said there was too much blood. I told them this was very special meat. It represented that I wanted their blood for the next four years. That was why the steak was cooked like that."

A true legend of the game yet one, who by his own admission, "never gave to the country ten per cent of my capacity" because he was removed from his position too early for an inferior replacement and, being a proud man, he retired rather than play the authorities' political game.

Rasic is remarkably fit, svelte and youthful. He has all his marbles. He could talk his way out of a bank siege but his opinions are educated, his views modern, his insight sharp and his humour clever and engaging.

How he hasn't been more used by Australian clubs and the football media is arguably worthy of a government inquiry of its own.

Much kudos to Mark Bosnich, an Australian football legend in his own right, for taking the time in last night's Fox Sports telecast to bring up the Serbia ceremony and to thank Rasic personally for what he has done for our game.

But it shouldn't be left to Bozza to slip it in at the end of an on-air post-game wrap-up. It's an indictment of how little has been done to recognise his contribution elsewhere.

Now that the Serbs have stolen a march on us, the most enduring recognition we can pay the man is to make use of him. Meaningfully and with all the respect he is due.

Not sure how many people tweeted him right back with invective and abuse but in his case I would venture it's a good thing replies don't appear on Twitter accounts.

The past week has witnessed what FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke calls a "watershed" moment in the history of world football's governing body and the mandate Blatter has been given, if "flawed", as the English pointed out at the Congress, still carries with it great responsibility.

Like it or not, we are lumped with Blatter. It is up to us to hold him to account if his performance doesn't match his rhetoric and the fight for greater accountability and transparency will go on, despite his rubber-stamping for a fourth term.

I was asked on Wednesday by one of The World Game's editors to write my thoughts on how Blatter can stamp out corruption now that the election is done and dusted.

The first thing is commissioning another bunch of committees is no answer. Nor is giving all 208 member associations a vote on who hosts the World Cup (an invitation to spread the corruption even wider). Nor is calling up Henry Kissinger, a man the great and now ailing Christopher Hitchens believes should be indicted for war crimes.

When I read that Blatter, a man compared to Muammar Gaddafi by Britain's The Sun newspaper, thought Richard Nixon's 88-year-old former Secretary of State was the man to clean up FIFA, I was convinced he'd run out of ideas.

Here's a tip, Mr Blatter.

Sort out the structures you already have in place. Don't add to the chaos and bloated bureaucracy. Restore confidence in the judicial processes of the organisation. Appoint new people of impeccable moral virtue, not the same old faces and loyalists. Review the wording of your statutes and Code of Ethics and tighten up any loopholes. Remove access to "football development" funds from the president and executive committee. Have no patience for hypocrisy and concentrate your stated "zero tolerance" on the double standards that plague the organisation.

Want an example? Why is Blatter able to give CONCACAF a $1 million "gift" in Miami without anyone's approval yet a matter of days later Mohamed Bin Hammam was nailed for doling out his own "gifts" to Caribbean Football Union delegates, members of the very same CONCACAF?

Apparently because the president can do what he likes and the finance committee picks up the tab, the chairman of that committee being Blatter's senior vice-president, Julio Grondona.

In an election race, is that really fair to the opponent?

As for ethics, what FIFA should value above all else, why, as James Dingemans QC points out in his report for the English Football Association into the accusations levelled by Lord Triesman against four executive committee members, does its own code "not expressly prevent persons, subject to the jurisdiction of FIFA, either offering or providing bribes… it is just receipt which is the subject of express provision"?

(Section 11.2, the part dealing with bribery, does not refer to offering or providing. It simply refers to "bribing". To bribe, the money has to be accepted.)

Why, under duty of disclosure requirements, is having knowledge of a third party's alleged intent to bribe an official not required to be reported? This is what saved Blatter from the FIFA ethics committee when he was brought before it last week.

He had to have knowledge that the "gifts" were actually received before reporting it. It's akin to declaring a person isn't derelict in their duty if they know a great crime is about to be committed and they don't report it.

It is not a crime but, in my opinion, that is not right. It is far from best practice.

Les Murray, TWG's eminence grise and a member of the ethics committee, says Blatter must "clean the place up" and "if it doesn't change it's going to go to pieces really, it can't sustain itself unless it undergoes, in my opinion, structural and constitutional change".

On that point he does not find disagreement from me.

The issue is whether Blatter's new proposals will add to the problem. I believe they will.

The solution is tidying up the house he already lives in.

"Competition is the best way to make the organisation vibrant and alive," he said when announcing his candidacy in March.

Not quite. Instead FIFA is a smoking ruin. Football governance has become a byword for Silvio Berlusconi-like sleaze. And the really remarkable thing? The election hasn't even happened yet.

Like Russia, FIFA reacts in funny ways when democracy upsets the apple cart. The banned Jack Warner warns a "tsunami" is about to hit football's world governing body and who could possibly doubt him?

The man Andrew Jennings called a "racist kleptomaniac" on ABC-TV last week is not a figure to be underestimated, especially with his limbs of influence amputated.

Nor is Bin Hammam, also banned by FIFA's ethics committee pending a full investigation into the allegations levelled against them by CONCACAF general secretary Chuck Blazer.

Sons of the desert have long memories.

What they will do next is anyone's guess. Warner is promising revenge on Blazer and the unsanctioned Blatter and may well take down everyone with him.

For his part Bin Hammam may elect to lay low, any provocation of FIFA could create a clear and present danger to Qatar's hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup.

But anything could happen.

And despite this climate of uncertainty and legal brinkmanship, of always-shifting political ground underfoot, FIFA is still going ahead with the election on Wednesday.

Afghanistan wouldn't have allowed the polls to go ahead in such circumstances.

Blatter is a getting a free pass to another four-year term.

How it could have been so different.

Earlier this year, federations around the world were approached to support a candidate who was offering football a kind of "Third Way", the ChangeFIFA nominee Elias Figueroa.

Figueroa, the former Internacional and Chile defender, three-times World Cup veteran and widely regarded as one of the greatest South American players of all time, was a cleanskin. No vested interests. No Machiavellian agenda. Just a commitment to change the game. A football person and a "people's" candidate with a track record in civic service.

But he needed an FA to nominate him. Australia was approached in the short window Figueroa had to put his name forward.

But Frank Lowy declined, just as he did when approached by the American journalist Grant Wahl.

As the person who ChangeFIFA asked to approach Lowy, former corporate affairs honcho Bonita Mersiades said: "Mr Lowy was friendly. His reasons for not nominating Figueroa were pragmatic and sound, as there were arguments for and against, but also disappointing. Along with others, I think it was an opportunity missed for Australia."

It was; as it was an opportunity for the world. But FAs as a habit don't stick their necks out. They are servile. Afraid to tread on toes. More concerned with how much money they stand to get from FIFA and their own political interests rather than what they can do to shape its future and make it better.

And Australia was no exception – despite having all sorts of reasons to make a stand against Bin Hammam, who had knifed them in the back during the World Cup bidding process, and Blatter, whose "Indian giving" is the stuff of legend.

When he had his chance to Lowy, like other FA chiefs, effectively hung Figueroa out to dry and the La Roja legend had no choice but to withdraw from a race in which he couldn't even get to the blocks. To ours and the world's great shame.

Because had Figueroa been in the race against Blatter there's every chance that given the events of the past week he would have stood a very good chance of winning. Of doing a Steven Bradbury when all others had fallen before the finish line.

Instead, the man no football fan wants a bar of gets another four years. Unfettered. Unchallenged. Unstoppable.

The headlines are inevitable. Blatter wins again. But we've all lost.

There is no bigger crisis facing FIFA than the one being played out in Switzerland this weekend, when Asian Football Confederation president Bin Hammam and CONCACAF president Warner face FIFA's ethics committee over sensational allegations levelled by Chuck Blazer, CONCACAF's general secretary, regarding the goings-on at a meeting in Port of Spain between Bin Hammam, Warner and the Caribbean Football Union on May 10.

Warner's case, especially, is not looking good. New evidence has surfaced that suggests the claims made by Lord Triesman all those weeks ago have solid foundation.

Some have called for the FIFA elections next week to be postponed. Others for FIFA to be destroyed altogether. My own and long standing preference is that a rebel world body be formed and FIFA is crushed through key withdrawals and a natural process of attrition.

The likelihood is that the elections will still go ahead, legal injunctions or not, Blatter will be returned as FIFA president for his fourth four-year term and FIFA will carry on as normal, sitting out the collective scorn of the media and the fantariat until such time our attention is diverted by the start of the new European season and palms can go back to being greased all over again.

But however FIFA moves on from this shameful period in its history something has to be done about football development: what it practically means, how funds are disbursed, where the funds go and what checks and balances are in place to ensure FIFA's war chest is spent properly and the attendant menace of corruption is eliminated completely.

All the World Cup bidding nations for 2018 and 2022 made football development a cornerstone of their sales pitches. The Koreans promised to spend a staggering $A 180 million for CONCACAF alone.

Blatter's own election manifesto is hinged on football development grants. He promises to spend $1 billion on such "development programs" via existing coffers and the windfall from Brazil 2014, making sure the point is made abundantly clear it's "my objective" to give more money away to "all member associations and federations". His presidential rival, Bin Hammam, has promised to double annual allowances to member associations. This is wrong and precisely where FIFA is getting into so much trouble.

For the sake of transparency, fairness and probity, FIFA should henceforth ban all World Cup bidding nations from making "football development" donations to other member associations, including trade sweeteners like the ones Qatar gifted Argentina and Uruguay in the lead-up to the vote in Zurich last December.

If there is money to be donated, send it to a central location: a FIFA bank or FIFA fund run by an independent governor and independent board, charged with the responsibility of disbursing "football development" grant to associations on a needs basis. Case by case, rather than the extant situation where money is just casually doled out without any real thought to how it is spent or where it is spent.

FIFA should also ban the president and any member of the executive committee from promising grants or promising to increase grants in any electoral campaign, either at the FIFA level or at confederation level. That money no longer becomes theirs to spend. That money becomes the preserve of the governor (and board) of the FIFA bank. He or she decides what can be spent and if it can be afforded.

The roles of president and executive committee member regress to simply being about making big-picture decisions in the interests of the game, such as the big one that never gets resolved: introducing effective goal-line technology to major tournaments.

FIFA doesn't need an ad-hoc taskforce to recommend those decisions. The executive committee should be capable enough to make them on their own and justify their already considerable remuneration. If they cannot make these sorts of decisions, they shouldn't be there to begin with. Why are we electing them?

They are supposed to football's leaders. Not football's leeches.

There are critics who think this is pie-in-the-sky stuff. Maybe it is. I've already had a good-natured disagreement about it with the British journalist James Corbett, who told me, "Turkeys won't vote for Christmas" apropos the requirement that such a reform be approved by 75 per cent of the FIFA Congress.

But when all is said and done the 208 member associations that make up FIFA really have lost their privilege to decide their own fate. They've lost our confidence. As a gesture to all the world's fans and to give itself a chance to ride out this storm and become a reputable entity, FIFA has to make changes.

And the biggest one, the hardest of all, is letting go of the money.

The FIFA president was asked to appear before the same British parliamentary inquest that has been a circuit-breaker in recent weeks for open and frank discussion about how the world game is run from Zurich and that gave rise to sensational allegations against six FIFA executive committee members.

But despite huffing and puffing and pretending he's a new man in charge of a clean organisation, Blatter declined the invitation, issuing a statement that "FIFA has informed the culture, media and sport committee that it is focusing on its own investigation and that there is therefore no need for the FIFA president to attend the committee".

What a crock. What a farce. What hypocrisy. Blatter isn't going because the hard questions will be asked and he doesn't have easy answers.

The reason why FIFA is now at its lowest ebb in the eyes of fans (take ChangeFIFA's survey) is the snakes and rats inside the organisation that should have exposed and crucified long ago have been protected by the inefficacy and boys' club politics of those same in-house investigations.

They've been let off because no one else but FIFA holds them to account. If it weren't for such parliamentary inquests and brave journalists working to uncover these abuses of power we would never know any better.

Any investigation of consequence that has happened at FIFA has only taken place because a third party has forced its hand. Not of its own volition.

Blatter will go on to win this election. Of that there is no doubt. But he will go into another four-year term with the world on his back and watching his every move like never before.

The Indian summer of football's dictators is over. The fans want change. The sponsors want change. The players want change.

My SBS colleague Craig Foster tweeted on Tuesday that: "The game's heart needs to be reclaimed, protected, rebuilt. I'd like to see board of greats with the game at heart. De-politicise football!"

Noble sentiments.

How such a great game has been allowed to be assaulted and left for dead by a bunch of avaricious, self-serving men is a tragedy of immense proportions. It is a pox on sport.

As lovers of football, we are all honour bound to do what we can to have it restored to what it used to be.

To again be able to regard the game with the innocence and wonder of a child rather than the cynicism and disappointment that has leached into us as politically aware, socially conscious adults is an outcome worth working towards. (Even on the field of play, the knocks to that innocence and wonder keep coming.)

To achieve that outcome, we have to speak up and fight the bastards who are ruining it. Let's make the beautiful game beautiful again and run the vandals out of town.

It's taken some time, but I'm finally on Twitter. You can find me at twitter.com/#!/JesseFink.

An unusually testy Sepp Blatter says "FIFA is not a corrupt organisation", a claim quantified out by his insistence, one he regularly makes, that FIFA "is a large family of more than 300 million people" and "it is virtually impossible for an organisation that spans the planet as ours does, to monitor all of its members all the time".

He's right on a couple of scores. FIFA is a large family and it would be impossible to police all of those 300 million people with 100 per cent efficacy.

But the number that matters is not 300,000,000. It is 208. That is the number of national associations in FIFA and the number of men in charge of those 208 associations. A far more manageable prospect.

Break it down a bit more and the magic number is 22. That's the privileged 22 of those 208 who have a seat on FIFA's executive committee. (Senior vice-president Julio Grondona and Blatter are also on the ex-co.)

Hardly a troublesome number for an organisation of FIFA's institutional influence, financial resources and political power. After all, Blatter just tossed a lazy $30 million at Interpol – even without the ex-co's approval.

Yet of that 22, we now have six implicated in the latest allegations emanating from a British inquiry into the failure of the England 2018 bid, including the most serious allegation that two African ex-co members took bribes from the Qatar 2022 bid.

Of those six men named, four (Nicolas Leoz, Ricardo Teixiera, Jack Warner and Issa Hayatou) have solid form in regard to accusations of corruption and unethical behaviour over decades of being in power, but no disciplinary action has ever been taken against them by FIFA.

FIFA's supporters will say there has been no evidence to hang them. Maybe so. But certainly there has been enough compelling evidence collected and enough of a pattern of conduct and behaviour has emerged to suggest they are not genuinely working in the interests of the game.

In my view, a view shared by so many disheartened fans around the globe, they are working in their own.

So that leaves 16 supposed lilywhites. Yet among that 16 we have Blatter's presidential rival Mohamed bin Hammam, a man who has now been ensnared through association by the shocking accusations levelled against Qatar 2022; Angel Maria Villar Llona, a man who was alleged to have passed a note to Bin Hammam just prior to the World Cup saying, "We are going to win”; and David Chung and Mohamed Raouraoua, who are only in there as replacements for the disgraced Reynald Temarii and Amos Adamu.

Which leaves 12, of which four (Junji Ogura, Chung Mong-joon, Senes Erzik and Michel Platini) have been named by Lord Triesman, who made his allegations against four of the 22 under parliamentary privilege, as "completely incorruptible".

(Ogura and Chung have since left the ex-co, replaced by Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein and Vernan Manilal Fernando.)

Four incorruptibles from out of an inner circle of 22 from that nebulous family of 300,000,000.

Not great maths. A poor equation, any which way you cut it.

Yet Blatter insists FIFA is not institutionally corrupt: "Even in a family of 300 million people, there is one or two; these are what you say are the 'black sheep', somebody who is not good in the family."

With respect, Mr Blatter, it's not one or two. It's a whole lot more. And it's a problem you should be able to deal with.

It's taken some time, but I'm finally on Twitter. You can find me at http://twitter.com/#!/JesseFink

According to the person who posted the photo on the Sydney FC Unofficial website, it was rescued from an uncertain fate by a well-meaning contractor working on the renovations/development of the Hakoah Club in Hall Street, Bondi, and the club had no interest in it and nor did FFA.

Which wouldn't surprise me one bit. Rale Rasic, the man who led Australia to its first World Cup in 1974, wrote to FFA's John O'Neill in 2003 offering up his amazing collection of Socceroos memorabilia housed in his home in Cecil Hills to governing body, provided it showcased it properly. O'Neill never responded.

Just like FFA never responded to football historian Ian Syson, who uncovered an extraordinary piece of information while researching the archives at the National Library in Canberra in 2009: that the first game of football appeared to have been played in Tasmania in 1879 and not in New South Wales in 1880.

It might point to the Football Hall of Fame but so what? Our responsibility to history is not to be selective or to discriminate. You don't pick and choose history. It's not a convenience. It's a duty. But the FFA treats the game's past with indifference.

"Lip service" would be too flattering a description for its conduct.

As Socceroos legend Manfred Schaefer told me while I was writing my book in 2006:

"One thing I detested very early on was the FFA had no regard [for the past]. The people that came in were strangers.

“They had no feeling for football whatsoever. No passion. They didn’t want any tradition. The game didn’t start when these guys came in.”

The appointment of Kyle Patterson, ex-SBS, to the staff of FFA in the key role of head of corporate affairs and communications was seen as a sop to "old soccer" - a way of bridging the past of the game to its future – and I trumpeted his appointment here at HTO.

But how can even Patterson explain the fact that an organisation that is telling us it wants to atone for some of its neglect of the vast, amorphous community of "stakeholders" that exists beneath and separate to the Socceroos and the A-League, sinks the boot into Melbourne Victory's and Melbourne Heart's planned participation in the Mirabella Cup?

The Mirabella Cup, a Victorian knockout comp for state and lower league clubs spiced up with the addition (in the latter stages) of Victory and Heart, essentially a modified reincarnation of the Dockerty Cup, wasn't going to hurt anybody, especially at a time when the local game sorely needs a bit of magic restored to it.

The prospect of a bunch of amateurs giant-killing an A-League club was a tantalising proposition, the hook for the entire enterprise.

But FFA has decided Victory's and Heart's participation, which it initially approved, compromises its planned nationwide FFA Cup.

“Since the initial discussions about Victory and Heart participating in the Mirabella Cup, the landscape has changed significantly,” an FFA spokesman blathered.

“In the past few months consideration of a national FFA Cup has been warmly embraced by the Hyundai A-League clubs and member federations.

“Work is underway to develop the ideas into a viable plan that would connect the grassroots to the national professional competition in a way that’s never been achieved before.

"Clearly, the key ingredient in these knock-out competitions is the ‘David v Goliath’ factor, which needs to be carefully packaged to appeal to fans, sponsors and broadcasters on a national scale.

“Having one state and two A-League clubs pre-empt a truly national cup competition is liable to erode the work that has been done and diminish that essential ingredient.

“Many stakeholders want to see the FFA Cup come to life and we need to give the idea every chance of success.”

Which just confirms the suspicion so many have had all along. That FFA cares not for the welfare of the game. It cares chiefly about control.

It cannot abide another body, in this case Football Federation Victoria, organising something that challenges its authority and dents its potential earnings from sponsorship and TV rights, just as it cannot abide journalists who don't tow the corporate line and who dare call it out for its failings.

Its approach is to crush and bully rather than engage and negotiate.

The only landscape that's changing is the size of the pit into which FFA is leading our game with such breathlessly dunder-headed decisions as this one.

It's clear the new football/old soccer debate is one that is never really going to go away until such time as Football Federation Australia faces up to the mistakes that were made when it turned its back on the game's past with the establishment of the A-League and proposes some form of meaningful reconciliation with the stakeholders that became collateral in the process rather than preaching the way it is from high up above.

(The way FFA has handled its relationship with the state federations is a case in point. One state president has complained privately that FFA's idea of "consultation" is more akin to a take-it-or-leave-it Treaty of Versailles-style diktat.)

One of the more interesting readers' suggestions was made by "Strongie", who said, apropos of a supposed rumour (most likely apocryphal and denied by at least one club party I put it to) that Marconi and Sydney Olympic were being considered as second Sydney teams: "Why can't the two clubs work together to put up a single team? They would have representation on its board with a third neutral party. Both could continue playing the two separate teams in the NSW Premier League. This would provide a pathway from the grassroots to the A-League for their players."

It's a commendable idea with some real potential, if troublesome geographically (would Sydney United–Marconi or Olympic–APIA be more practical?), and it puts the onus back on the "ethnic" clubs who have complained about being shunned and disenfranchised to show that they can operate successfully while being divorced from their traditional livery.

It also lays down a challenge to all supporters of those clubs to prove that first and foremost they care about the club and not about the nationalism that sometimes comes as a corollary of that support.

Old colours might be acceptable in a reconstituted shirt, but will Greek flags, for instance, be laid down for the sake of political unity and palatability to a wider support base?

If it could be managed, and the necessary board machinations negotiated and egos of club presidents massaged, such a merger could set a template for other new potential A-League "franchises" from the springboard of the NSWPL or Victorian Premier League to emulate.

Mergers of clubs in sport don't always work but some do – like Wests Tigers in the NRL, like Brisbane Lions in the AFL.

There's no reason to think, then, that a merger of two so-called "ethnic" clubs couldn't be arrived at if there was requisite will and a spirit of conciliation on both sides. Not to mention an acceptance that they have to be "broad-reach" entities.

If it was tried and it all fell in a heap, though, it would merely confirm the suspicions of the "new football" brigade: that former National Soccer League clubs existed for reasons other than football.

Or to be blunt: were just vehicles for stirring old enmities, settling sectarian scores and chest-beating about their men-folk's virility and superiority.

The game doesn't need that; it never has. That's one thing FFA surmised correctly when it came into being.

But the game does need these supporters' passion, their knowledge, their patronage and ultimately, to be crude, their money.

My perspicacious Sydney Olympic-supporting friend, Dennis Mothoneos, made an excellent point to me in a discussion we were having today that the "A-League made a big mistake in re-creating another Sydney City Hakoah, Sydney FC, without another rival club reconstituted from one of the existing clubs or another club acting as an umbrella for the Greek, Italian, Serbian, Croatian, Anglo-Celtic, etc, communities. Sydney City was the club everyone hated. The rival club would have provided a vehicle for this hatred. Of course, I mean sporting hatred.

"And when FFA decided to create a second club, Sydney Rovers, it was really a reborn Blacktown City Demons, which was seen with suspicion by the 'ethnic' clubs. So if Sydney Rovers had ever got off the ground, FFA would have had two clubs that the ethnics would not support in large numbers. They really have no idea. It’s like Eddie McGuire is providing advice to them."

Maybe not McGuire but someone as good as.

What's abundantly clear, though, is that the A-League cannot go on living, to echo a Warren Zevon song, in splendid isolation from its own past.

Embracing the game's history is part of the solution to fixing its future. It can be done. And it doesn't need to be difficult.

Just calm heads, mutual respect and common purpose are required.

Cascadia, a term used to describe the region that takes in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada, has become the fastest growing football territory in the world, giving rise to Sounders, Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps, and turning the North American football scene on its head with passionate support that would take pride of place in any European league.

The scenes at Qwest Field in Seattle for the derby were quite extraordinary, 36,593 fans braving atrocious conditions to set a ground record and orchestrating a magnificent tifo display before the game that was quite breathtaking to watch.

This is the football passion that World Cup organisers for the USA 2022 bid wanted to tap.

It's the football passion that is being incubated in a league not even 20 years old, a competition that we should be doing our best to research and emulate. It’s the football passion that frankly our nascent A-League lacks.

The question is: How do we better tap our own football passion when where's a well of it waiting to gush forth right under our feet?

Australia prides itself on being a "sporting mad" nation and from a football perspective we saw that writ large at the Socceroos vs Uruguay World Cup qualifier in 2005 but it's a reputation frequently undermined by the sterile domestic competition.

The A-League has had its moments – those early Sydney-Melbourne contests, grand finals, the fledgling rivalry between Heart and Victory – but even the most emboldened optimist would admit they are few and far between.

There's a reason why the AFL and NRL are getting stronger: the A-League is boring people. There is very little tribalism or visceral attachment to clubs. Attendant atmosphere at games.

Added to which a huge vibrant community of football tragics – that amorphous, (to some eyes) menacing group known as "ethnics" – are being actively shunned.

There were very good reasons for the old soccer/new football dichotomy in 2005, but Football Federation Australia should have learned by now that it was a disconnect the A-League could not afford in the long term.

Thankfully, it appears, changes are being made. For a man under frequent fire, Ben Buckley's attendance at the forthcoming Footy Fans Down Under Fan Forum at Doltone House in Sydney on May 24 is to be commended.

The World Game will be recording the event for two full episodes, to be screened on SBS TWO in June.

Let's trust one of the questions put to Buckley is how he proposes to bring more Greeks, Croatians, Serbs, Macedonians, Italians, Spaniards, Argentineans, Uruguayans and Portuguese, among many other nationalities, back to the game. Not just through an FFA Cup where that divide is perpetuated.

Rather, back into the game through active support of A-League clubs.

Not all ethnic fans are meat-headed, flare-carrying teenagers. In fact, in my experience that stereotype could be nothing further from the truth. One of my good friends who follows Sydney Olympic, for instance, runs philosophy nights at his cafe, reads tomes on Russian history for fun and can recite the verse of Constantine Cavafy. He's a bright bloke.

Others with ties to old National Soccer League clubs are actors, writers, baristas, agents, lawyers, bankers and accountants.

All are intelligent, thoughtful, non-aggressive people with no interest in sectarianism or nationalism. But all, to a man (and woman), won't have a bar of the A-League.

They regard it as a confection of hubris and artifice, antithetical to the football milieu they grew up in: where clubs were about community not branding and experiences were felt in the heart not in the wallet.

The MLS has not disenfranchised ethnics. In fact they are a huge part of what makes the American league tick.

They, more than any other, are the group FFA needs to reach out to in order to make the A-League work, especially in Sydney, the biggest city in Australia with the most ethnic communities in Australia.

Does FFA engage them with big-name marquees they can identify with, such a Raul, Pirlo or Totti? Does FFA engage them by identifying young talent in the suburbs and bringing them up through the system? Does FFA engage them by going into social clubs, church groups, schools and dressing sheds and admitting they got it wrong and simply beg for them to come back?

What, other than the FFA Cup, is FFA's strategy for this crucial old soccer/new football rapprochement? For if it can manage it, some passion might be restored to Australian football.

If it cannot, we might as well kiss the A-League goodbye.

The floor is yours, Buckley. Let's hear your plan.

Ten times Australian sides have had a crack at the cherry in five seasons of ACL football. Only Adelaide (twice) and Newcastle Jets have made the last 16.

Why? Superficially the answer seems simple.

Teams work their butt off (and spend a considerable amount of money) to get in a position to win the Premier's Plate or get to an A-League grand final to earn that chance to play in the ACL, only to have to wait near on a year to compete, in the off-season and often without the same cattle on the park that earned it that chance in the first place.

Scheduling, salary caps and lack of roster depth cruel Australian campaigns even before they've begun. And the corollary of these poor showings is fan apathy, low TV ratings and a heavy financial toll for clubs. If you lose group matches in the ACL, you get nothing.

But to offer these factors solely as explanations for a bad trot in Asia is far too easy.

The problems lie far deeper and are no simple matter to fix. They are cultural and plainly obvious when Australian teams play Japanese sides.

As I've previously argued, "in combination play, ball possession, lightness of touch, structure, positioning, movement off the ball and sheer fitness the Japanese and Koreans are at another level [from Australians] altogether".

Japanese teams, especially, steeped in the ways of joga bonito through decades of Brazilian tutelage, look like they are almost in slow motion when they play against A-League outfits, such is the languid ease with which they toy with their opposition, even against sides that are pressing.

You could proffer all sorts of ready made excuses for Australia's comparative crudeness and torpor (and Fox Sports commentators regularly do, jet lag one of them) but it appears to me A-League sides simply operate from an inferior technical base, give way too much latitude to opposing midfielders and are coming up short when it comes to timing and positioning.

A friend commented to me this week that he had just been to Brazil to get a taste of their football instruction and was "shocked" by what he saw in training.

"I went there with expectations of seeing complex training methods and drills I had never seen before," he said. "The simplicity in what they did was staggering.

"They would do passing drills for two hours, or play small-sided games, over and over again. Beats me why we try to reinvent the wheel; why not just copy what works?"

Hopefully the inspirational Brisbane Roar will subvert this growing stereotype of the plodding Aussie when it gets its opportunity against the best in Asia in 2012.

I believe Roar will be a genuinely exciting proposition in the ACL.

But for the sake of the local game Football Federation Australia has to chip in as well and do what it can to give its teams the best chance of success.

And that's stop sitting on its hands and and get serious about getting the most out of Asia.

That is going to require accepting that having the A-League's ACL entrant confirmed after the Asian Football Confederation's cutoff date in January is not working in Australian football's interests.

FFA cannot change the way the AFC does its business but it can change the way it runs its own comp.

Instead of later, as FFA is doing in 2011, why not start the A-League season earlier with a break for the AFL and NRL finals series in September/October and have it end before Christmas, so that the A-League season at least correlates as close as possible to the ACL season of February to November?

Japan does it. Its season runs from March to December.

Korea does it. Its season also runs from March to December.

It would require advance planning, acceptance of a partial clash with the AFL and NRL, some tinkling with TV deals and the possible forfeiture of the next lot of Australian teams to qualify for the ACL but something has to be done to better align the A-League with Asian club football's cash cow.

As it stands, A-League clubs and their fans are getting nothing out of the ACL. They are getting punished financially.

Australia football is not giving itself its best chance of success.

Above all, it is not helping the ACL penetrate the Australian market or helping the nation make those big off-field inroads on the continent by being a perpetual also-ran.

Something has to give but will FFA come to the party?

Had Collins and the Sunday Times fully published their explosive allegations against Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma (as well as the already disgraced Amos Adamu) last year, acting on information from banned executive committee member Amadou Diakite, there's a very good chance the United States would have won the 2022 World Cup and not Qatar and the football world would be a happy place.

But not everything journalists write gets to be published. The threat of legal action. Allegations that are difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Stories being "buried" because of the political connections of editors and owners.

Even still, the Sunday Times went ahead and made the allegations against the pair but without naming them, in a story published after the vote and available online by subscription.

Nothing happened. Even when the Sunday Times sent corroborating information to FIFA's ethics committee before and after publication of the article. Even when Ivan Lewis, the Tory shadow secretary for culture, wrote to FIFA asking for an investigation apropos the allegations, FIFA did nothing.

It didn't even bother replying to him. As the Sunday Times' Claire Newell and Jonathan Calvert say bluntly in their submission: "FIFA did not write back.

"The allegations were and remained unproven," it went on, "but we believe they were credible because they were made people who held or had held official positions in FIFA (and later supported by a whistle-blower from within the Qatar bid) and were so serious that you would have expected a responsible governing body to launch an investigation into them.”

Indeed. But this is FIFA, after all. An opaque Death Star of peerless arrogance where anything goes – so long as no one is watching.

And it undermines, once again, any claim Sepp Blatter has that he is serious about eliminating corruption from the game.

There he was this week, coasting in his presidential election campaign, pumping hands in Zurich with the secretary general of Interpol after donating tens of millions of dollars to the international anti-crime agency to fight match-fixing and irregular betting.

All well and good. Another photo op for the indefatigable Blatter.

But when it comes to making his own flock account for their alleged abuses of power, he is silent. Nicolas Leoz, Ricardo Teixiera, Issa Hayatou, Worawi Makudi, Jack Warner… when will it stop? When is enough enough?

It's now. The fans have had a gutful.

Blatter is promising an investigation and making his usual blather about digesting the information and requiring more evidence. But he has every reason to stall, given there is the not insignificant matter of the election at the FIFA Congress in June, for which he requires the support of Hayatou and the crucial CAF voting rump.

But he should not be allowed any latitude. He should not be allowed to bury this in the same way his organisation has buried so many other things.

And if the allegations are ultimately proven and Qatar has been shown to have bribed its way to winning the 2022 World Cup, it must be stripped from them and given to the nation that placed second, the United States.

If they are proven and FIFA does nothing, the Americans, Australians, South Koreans and Japanese should launch legal action to seek compensation and/or some form of restitution. Even help form a rebel world federation.

I flagged the possibility of this very switch scenario happening back in February in a column for The World Game and I hold to it: a second American World Cup is the best outcome for the world game and when, all factors are weighed up, was the outstanding candidate among the 2022 field of Australia, Qatar, Japan and South Korea.

There is a view being expressed today that there should be a new ballot but I don't share it. Another round of expensive politicking isn't in anyone's interest and things have been said since the vote by the defeated parties that could adversely prejudice the outcome.

In any case, FIFA's executive committee is in tatters. It has zero credibility. All of its members should all be thrown out on their ear. They should not be dignified with the privilege of casting another vote.

Blatter, the wiliest of politicians, will likely survive this scandal like he has so many others during his presidency.

But if these allegations hold up, nothing should save Qatar 2022.