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Once the white smoke from FIFA’s conclave of cardinals has dissipated into the clear alpine air on Thursday (December 2), the way will be clear for an almighty inquest into the way English football is run.
The disappointing nature of the national team’s 2010 World Cup campaign in South Africa has ensured this inquest will happen whether or not England’s bid to stage world football’s flagship tournament in 2018 succeeds.
But, for all the efforts of Andy Anson, Prince William, David Beckham et al, an England win in this tough away fixture in Switzerland looks, as I write, a desperately long shot, notwithstanding the bid’s outstanding technical quality.
A further off-field disappointment, to add to the let-down in the rainbow nation earlier in the year, would make the clamour for reform all but irresistible.
As UK Sports Minister Hugh Robertson told me the other day: “If the FA think that no action on football governance in this country is an option, they are wrong.”
The Coalition Government has even set out a timetable for the next steps in the Department for Culture Media and Sport’s recently-published four-year business plan.
Turn to point 5.4, items iii and iv, and you read:
“iii Work with football bodies to consider how best to improve football governance, including options to support the co-operative ownership of football clubs by supporters. Start: December 2010. End: May 2011.
“iv Publish proposals for improving governance in sport. May 2011.”
Something to look forward to, then, just after the royal wedding.
As Robertson’s comment implies, both of the matters likely to be most immediately at issue are essentially the FA’s responsibility.
But that doesn’t mean other bodies, not to mention the media, will escape criticism.
In particular, the Premier League is likely once again to be demonised as a selfish, rich men’s club that pursues only its own interests to the detriment of the big picture.
I certainly wouldn’t argue that the league has a perfect record when it comes to furthering the noble cause of English football.
But I hope, in the debate, we don’t lose sight of the fact that elite league football is the sole area where England can justifiably still claim to lead the world in the sport that constitutes perhaps its greatest global legacy.
If the FA had a scintilla of the Premier League’s commercial trenchancy, the English game would be in a much better place than the one in which it finds itself today.
I hope too that the debate is realistic enough to acknowledge that – in a world in which the best players are employees of their clubs and not their countries – these clubs have a legitimate interest in helping to shape the international calendar.
Much as we might prefer it to be otherwise, a crunch league match in February will always take precedence, in club directors’ eyes, over an international friendly.
Unless and until the FA is in a position – like other team sports – to pay for the players included in its squads, the clubs’ priorities are always going to have to be accommodated.
That is not to say that no changes to the league’s modus operandi are necessary.
The stakes are so high now that the pursuit of glory – and survival – can induce the sort of desperation that can lead clubs to take unreasonable financial risks.
And it is when clubs are under extreme financial pressure that, I think, they tend to be most self-centred.
So I think the Premier League should be encouraged to embrace measures such as UEFA’s financial fair play concept aimed at protecting European football’s long-term viability.
Happily, the league – perhaps chastened by recent experience – is currently showing every sign of taking its responsibilities in this area seriously.
I am told that clubs now have to provide financial information in March each year showing how they are going to meet all their liabilities for the season ahead.
Clubs also have to prove, on a quarterly basis, that they have no outstanding tax liabilities.
I have to say that one feature of the 2010 World Cup was how few of the tournament’s stars were Premier League players.
Andrés Iniesta, David Villa (pictured), Xavi, Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben, Mesut Özil, Thomas Müller, Diego Forlán, Asamoah Gyan…Need I go on?
And while I don’t think it should be a source of national shame that England loses football matches to Germany every now and then, for the past two World Cups now the national side has appeared dismayingly washed-up and exhausted.
This may, in part, be the result of intolerable media pressure.
But it may also be attributable to the physical demands of a Premier League season.
Fernando Torres and – with the very notable exception of the final – Cesc Fábregas were, after all, nearly as peripheral in South Africa as their Liverpool and Arsenal team-mates.
So, I think part of the price for producing a stronger England team – certainly in the summer months when the key international tournaments always take place – may have to be accepting an 18-team – perhaps even a 16-team – Premier League.
The smaller clubs – the dozen or so battling on a quasi-permanent basis for Premier League survival – are not going to like this for obvious reasons.
But, on this point, I think there is a case for attempting to apply strong pressure.
I think the league needs also to be encouraged to get involved in a concerted national push over 15 or 20 years to make good the UK’s woeful national deficit in coaching skills.
Discouraging figures for the number of qualified British football coaches in comparison with other big west European countries have been circulated often enough in recent months.
But I believe the roots of the problem lie in the way that football in schools has historically been seen as a means of character development that teaches children to work together towards a common goal, at times to put up with physical discomfort, never to give up, that sort of thing.
If clubs from all parts of the football pyramid could be required to play a more active role, working with teachers and parents in a co-ordinated way to inject a greater emphasis on basic skills and tactics, I think the impact, over time, would be profound and extremely beneficial.
Once the World Cup bid is done and dusted we are also going to be thrust straight away into another debate about the command structure of the FA.
This is because of the pressing need to replace Lord Triesman as FA Chairman.
A nominations committee is in the process of coming up with a name to put to the FA board on December 22.
The board will then decide whether to take this name to Council for ratification in January.
In the past, I and others have criticised the board for being structurally inclined to deadlock on key issues because of the equal number of members in its ranks (currently five and five) representing the professional and national, or grass-roots, games.
Changes implemented as a result of the 2005 Burns report went some way towards addressing this by giving potentially logjam-breaking votes to the FA Chairman and Chief Executive, now General Secretary.
But the turmoil of recent times has shown that these changes did not go far enough – all the more so as a requirement for the Chairman to have been independent of any football post for 12 months prior to taking the job was recently abandoned.
I happen to think that decision was rather sensible: the FA Chairman’s job is tough enough without foisting it on an individual who has been out of the loop for a considerable period.
The FA statutes, moreover, still insist on the Chairman’s independence – just not the 12-month interval since holding other football-related posts.
But even the most hard-headed of independent chairmen will feel a need for good advice, from time to time, delivered by impartial voices in full possession of all the facts.
That plus the desirability of an injection of commercial acumen into the FA from business specialists not weighed down by the responsibility of running their own clubs to me makes a compelling case for replacing two existing FA board members with independent non-executive directors.
After all, why on earth do the professional and national games require five board representatives each to make their case?
What is more, as luck would have it, with the London 2012 Olympic project approaching its final stages, a number of respected, sports-savvy individuals may soon be finding themselves with unaccustomed time on their hands.
An outward-looking, fit-for-purpose FA; now that would be an Olympic legacy worth having.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938