Insideworldfootball

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British football’s privileges are under threat. But don’t blame Sir David Richards if Britain loses its unique status in world football. That will be the natural reaction after our Dave’s extraordinary performance in Doha last week. But it will be wrong. Look to wider politics in the world body for the answer.

Not that the Premier League chairman covered himself with glory when he went to Qatar last week. His mission there was to tell the world what it can learn from the Premier League having become the most powerful League in the world. As has been well documented, he decided he would turn historian cum cultural commissar. And this was not helped by the fact that, having performed this curious, self-imposed role, he slipped and fell into an ornamental pool just as the assembled guests were sitting down for dinner. But that, it must be said, was not his fault. I was sitting a few feet away. There was no drink involved and it is the sort of accident that can happen to anyone.

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The easiest way to understand Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea, is to appreciate that he is like a child with a new toy train set. The child knows his shiny new train set is better than anything possessed by the other kids, and while he wants to show off, he does not want to share his toys with anyone else. All he wants is to show how clever and superior he is in possessing this set.

Indeed, Abramovich’s behaviour since he took over Chelsea has been quite extraordinary and this extends beyond getting rid of seven managers in his eight years in charge. So Abramovich has never accepted the convention that when Chelsea play away, he, as the owner, should accept the hospitality offered by the directors of the home team. This is a very old tradition in English football.

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Good can sometimes come out of evil, and the debate on racism that the game is going through could well lead to English football going down the road of America and adopting the Rooney rule. This rule, named for Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and chairman of the league’s diversity committee, was introduced in 2003 so that minority coaches, especially African Americans, were at least considered for high-level coaching positions.

It basically states that, for a position of general manager or head coach, a minority candidate must be interviewed. Not necessarily given the job, but part of the selection process. Americans emphasise that this is not a quota system. It is a means of making the system fairer and reflecting the world of American football. The acceptance of the rule has seen several NFL franchises hire African American head coaches, and now eight of the 32 teams have black coaches. This, in a league where 67 per cent of the players are black, is not an unreasonable proportion.

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Insideworldfootball

Administrators being called into Glasgow Rangers is more than yet another football club living way beyond its means. This is one of those seminal moments when you feel the world has changed and may not be the same again. It illustrates the perils of football commercialism and how dangerous it can be.

No, it is not quite football’s equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall; to suggest that would be going a touch too far.

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Whatever the final outcome of the John Terry case, and Terry must be regarded as innocent until his trial is concluded, it has already had a tremendous impact on the English game.

It has made us look at the role played by the captain in English football, and the relationship between the Football Association and the England manager. But the most long lasting impact of the case could be on how black footballers feel about racism in the game.

The way English football has elevated the captain’s job to a position that cannot be sustained has always struck me as faintly absurd. A captain in football is not remotely like a captain in other sports like cricket. The very nature of cricket means that the captain constantly has to take decisions, decisions which can change the course of the match. He may consult the coach but the decisions are his responsibility and he has to be in a position to take charge of his players and the game. You cannot have a successful cricket team if the captain does not exercise leadership on the field of play.

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