The World Cup is gone. English football now needs some clear thinking about its future relations with the international game.
The disappointment of the Zurich vote that saw the 2018 World Cup awarded instead to Russia brought with it talk of breaking away from FIFA.
Such thoughts, moreover, were not confined to those whom one might easily write off as “extremists” in this context.
The trouble with breaking away, though, is that you need someone to break away with.
With the possible exceptions of the United States and Australia, I can think of no national association remotely as disillusioned with the 2018/22 World Cup host selection process as England.
This makes it hard to imagine who conceivably might follow the English FA down the path of global football rebellion.
I wouldn’t even be sure that the other constituent countries of the United Kingdom would come along for the ride.
So we would very likely be going it alone – a predicament that might end up with the virtual disbandment of the England national team.
That would spare many of us considerable mental torment as we settled down to focus on the excitement dished up week in, week out by the English Premier League.
But would this not also immediately be jeopardised by a decision to turn our backs on Zurich?
Is it not reasonable to suppose that FIFA might very well respond by threatening players employed in the rebel territory with a World Cup ban?
While some, whose best international days were behind them, might resist such pressure, my guess is that the stars of the moment would not.
Yes, the Premier League is certainly the best, and probably the richest, domestic club league in the world – but not by sufficient margin as to induce the planet’s top footballers to sacrifice their international careers in order to stay there.
If a breakaway does not look on, how about forcing reform of FIFA by dumping the present top brass?
We are, after all, entering world football’s election season, with the five main continental confederations all due to hold congresses before the 61st FIFA Congress, at which President Joseph Blatter (pictured) is expected to seek another four-year term, in Zurich on May 31 and June 1.
To orchestrate a successful coup against Blatter, the FA could do with someone more sympathetic to its aims than Michel Platini at the head of UEFA, the European football confederation.
And a UEFA Presidential election is due on March 22.
However, while Platini might have seemed vulnerable in May when a bid from his native France only narrowly prevailed over Turkey in the race to stage the 2016 European football championship, his position seems to have strengthened since, with the global economic crisis and the heavy debt-loads carried by some clubs combining to add credibility to his so-called “Financial Fair Play” proposals.
As for Blatter, the most likely scenario five and a half months out, is that he will secure another term, until 2015, unopposed.
Even if a strong reform candidate is identified and is prepared to run against him, the Swiss incumbent’s position looks formidable.
With 208 FIFA member associations, the target in any run-off will be 105 votes.
From this distance and almost irrespective of who might run against him, I would be surprised if Blatter were not backed by: the vast majority of the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation CONCACAF’s 35 members; a chunk of Africa (53 votes), grateful for delivery to the continent of the 2010 World Cup; part of Asia (46 votes), particularly the Arab world still celebrating the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar; and most of Eastern Europe.
So fomenting an internal rebellion looks like another blind alley, partly because time is so short.
Which leaves what I believe to be much the best manner in which the English football establishment can react to the disappointment of December 2 – try to work more effectively from inside FIFA’s complex committee structure to shape the body over time more to our liking.
In this context, it is perhaps unfortunate that England is about to lose the one seat that it does have in FIFA’s inner sanctum, when Geoff Thompson (pictured) cedes his Executive Committee place to Northern Ireland’s Jim Boyce next May.
On the other hand, the next two to three years will in any case be a period of significant flux at the world governing body, with, by my reckoning, anything up to 50 per cent of seats set to change hands.
Not a bad time, all in all, to be seeking to build broader-ranging and more constructive relationships.
Nor is England quite as reluctant to work through the FIFA committee structure as is sometimes claimed.
An analysis I undertook of 30 FIFA committees and judicial bodies showed that of 474 posts available, 11 were in English hands.
Were these divvied up equally among member associations, that number would have been between two and three.
This still only leaves England as a middling FIFA power, perched just ahead of Egypt, Cameroon and Qatar (with 10 posts each) and behind Japan, Spain and Trinidad & Tobago (with 12).
The United States, perhaps surprisingly the most heavily-represented country, has double England’s representation with 22 posts.
Nonetheless, it should provide a relatively solid base to build on if, as I hope, the FA decides to work with FIFA rather than against it.
The overriding aim of such legwork should be correctly to identify Blatter’s successor – at the moment the likeliest candidates look to be Platini and Qatar’s Mohamed Bin Hammam – and to work as constructively as possible with him on matters of mutual interest.
Only in that way will England have a worthwhile chance of landing the World Cup on the next occasion I think it will return to Western Europe – in 2034.
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