It is a joy to put Ned’s late offering in front of you. He looks back to an astonishing season when Arsenal, yet to win a major trophy, came closer than most in the twentieth century at that point to a double. Certainly it was closer than any southern team had come, and we would come even more agonisingly close six years later, having won both competitions for the first time in the two preceding seasons. Thank you so much Ned. Enjoy all.
Apologies to all in this estimable establishment if the fascination at Castle Ned with Arsenal’s rise between the world wars is becoming an obsession. Please indulge me one last time (for this season!) ahead of an FA Cup tie, one we all hope will be record setting (the tie, not the indulgence).
Aston Villa had won the FA Cup even before Woolwich Arsenal first entered the competition in 1889. They would win the trophy five more times before the two clubs were first drawn together in the Cup. Twenty-eight league meetings in the meantime had brought us little success — just six wins.
That first FA Cup meeting was in the Fifth Round on February 20th, 1926 at Villa Park. Arsenal were in transition. It was Herbert Chapman’s first season as manager. However, this was the tie of the round. Both teams were flying high in the old Division One. We were third, having topped the table throughout January, and would finish as runners-up, the highest place yet achieved by a London club. Villa lay sixth, which would also be their final position.
January and February had been unusually mild and wet interspersed with cold snaps. Villa Park was muddy that day. One of several early chance for the visitors went begging when inside right Jimmy Brain slipped in front of goal. We had started fast and furiously, but Villa gradually blunted the threat. The first half ended goalless.
Six minutes into the second period Chapman’s newly bought skipper, Charlie Buchan, headed home a cross from Bert Lawson. Lawson was a promising young winger who’d just got into the first team. He would lose his place when Joe Hulme, another of Chapman’s early big-name signings, arrived that very month from Blackburn Rovers. Lawson moved on to Brentford at the end of the season having played just 16 games. ’Twas ever hard for youngsters to break through.
The lead lasted three minutes. Keeper Bill Harper fumbled a Kirton cross, and the equaliser spun off a post into the net. There was plenty more excitement to thrill the 73,000 crowd, but no more goals, and 1-1 was the final score.
Four days later, we won the replay 2-0 in front of 71,000 at Highbury. One report said that Arsenal “had been rarely seen to play better”. Click here to see rare video coverage.
After four minutes, London-born Scottish outside left Dr. Jimmy Patterson, filling in for the cup-tied Hulme, drove home a pass from Brain from 12 yards out. Brain, the first player to notch 100 league goals for Arsenal, doubled the score 10 minutes later with a tap-in after Villa’s keeper Cyril Spiers spilled a Buchan pile driver.
The Patterson goal was rarer than a can’t-be-arsed paragraph. Dr Patterson, as he was known even in newspapers’ match reports, had served gallantly during the First World War as a medical officer with the London Scottish Regiment. After the war he played 73 games for the club as an amateur before retiring at the end of the 1923-24 season to concentrate on the medical practice he shared with his brother-in-law, John Scott, who was also the club’s doctor.
Dr. Patterson was good enough to have won the Scottish league title, playing on the right wing for Rangers when he was a medical student in Glasgow before the war. He won a second title in the first season after the war having switched to the opposite wing. Yet, after moving south, despite holding down as regular a place in the Arsenal forward line as a working doctor could expect to manage, and being picked for the Football League representative XI, he didn’t once score a goal in our colours before hanging up his boots.
Facing a chronic injury crisis, again nothing new under the sun, Chapman persuaded the good doctor to turn out for four games between mid-February and early March, 1926. Dr. Patterson not only broke his Arsenal duck but scored twice, the goal against Villa in the Cup and another against Newcastle in the League.
Hopes were high after the Villa game of a first Arsenal Cup Final. Four of the big guns of the 1925-26 season, Huddersfield, Bury, Sheffield United and Liverpool, had been knocked out in the previous round. Two more, Villa and Sunderland, were now gone. That left us and Bolton Wanderers as the two best teams still in.
However, we would fall at the last eight. Second Division Swansea Town caused a 2-1 upset at Vetch Field in the Quarters. Click here to see some amazing footage of the shock defeat.
Patterson played his fourth and final post-retirement game but couldn’t find a third career goal to keep us in it. Northern Irish international right back John ‘Alex’ Mackie got our goal, the only one he scored in 118 games for Arsenal. He would soon lose his place to Tom Parker, another of Chapman’s pivotal signings, but went on to a successful career at Portsmouth.
We’ve played ten FA Cup ties in all against Aston Villa, half of them crammed into an eight-season stretch between 1926 and 1934. We prevailed in seven of the ten, twice after replays, and lost three, once after a replay. Two ties were in the 3rd round, four in the 4th round, and one in the 5th round. Three were quarter-finals. The two clubs have never met beyond that stage before now.
Villa last won the Cup in 1957, a 2-1 win over Manchester United that gave them the Cup for a then record seventh time. They have made the Final only once since, losing 1-0 to that lot from the bus stop in Fulham in 2000. It was the first final Villa had played against a team from south of Aston.
Victory at Wembley on May 30 will bring us a record-setting 12th FA Cup. It will also neatly tie another historical knot. It would give Arsene Wenger his sixth FA Cup, tying the record of George Ramsey. Ramsey managed Aston Villa to their first six trophies between 1887 and 1920 and was still in charge, aged 71, when the two teams first met in the Cup in February 1926.
69 Responses to “Guest Post: Arsenal v Aston Villa – The First Cup Tie, By North Bank Ned”
Astonishing detail, Ned.
Did your monks all used to work for MI5 ?
Seriously, thanks. Very interesting.
champion stuff ned
champion
.
cheers fella
.
monkly goodness
🙂
write a feckin book ned
no joke
come on
and oi you
swindon
you too
and
come to think of it
more than a couple or three
reprobates here
i’d buy books wrut by
feckin get on wi it
lazy shower
🙂
Brilliant!
Best write up that sums up the history.
Certainly better than any dribble they scrawl over at the BBC..!
😀
Super stuff. I hope, for your sanity, you actually did not remember all of it but had the monks look up a detail or two. 🙂
Six FA cups wins… By a manager who obviously doesn’t respect the great tradition of English football. 🙂
And I thought monks only brewed beer….and had bad haircuts.
Aaargh – someone fecked with my name!!!!
But I have now had the operation…..
howdy z
you’re one
get fuckin writin
yeah
you heard
arseurs await
ned, that’s just fabulous. i hope the moral of the fable will be that six in hand is worth one in the bush. or something.
looks like your k-ectomy was successful, ziko. or, maybe not.
I’ve long thought Holic could write a book about Arsenal but the lazy sod won’t do it 😉
Ned
You’ve surpassed yourself. History brought to life. Thank you as ever for your research and the dedication of the monks!
CBA
You’ve had a very worthwhile idea there. Holic there is a host of memories among our scribes and we have seen some exceptional pieces this year. Might there not be a book in it that could raise a serious sum for Charity?
I’ve been telling the Guvnor to do a history book for years.
Maybe, if they haven’t got time individually, they could do a collaberation.
Do monks collaberate, Ned ?
Or is it against their vows ?
😉
Super stuff Ned….a pint of Abbotts ale for all the hard working monks
( that’s each, not shared).
Heh Uply,
That will only lead to a lot of monky business. 😉
Trev…you’re right – don’t want them to go ape 🙂
A surplice of ale will do them no good at all.
They’ll all wake up feeling ruff and the abbott will get cross.
That’s just the way it is – can’t altar it …….. 😉
Trev, I think more medication / less meditation will keep the monks working away. Maybe Ned drip feeds them with Benedictine liqueur 🙂
Lovely work, Ned, a libation of their choice on the bar for the monks. Always fun to see footballin the kind of muddy paddocks we played in as kids in clog-heavy boots more suited to trench troops. Thems was the days, aye.
‘Holic write a book about Arsenal, Cynic? Lovely idea which I’m sure the barman is seriously considering, right boss? Either that or a book about this blog in which, Heaven forfend, he lays out his real thoughts about the various contributors. Now that could be as informative as AW’s autobio in which we learn (among much else) what exactly did go on behind the scenes in the Higuain/Suarez etc transfer negotiations. And maybe what is about to happen in the upcoming window…
Öskar
All hail the monks. They must be chanting, “Victoria Concordia Crescit.”
Congrats on winning the You Ropey League, 8ball, you ran away from me in the final furlongs. We were close at one stage, but our teams had too much in common and I had to go radical to try and overtake. Ended disastrously!
A great late season run from H2H too. Well done the Dutch double. 😉
Öskar
Top Job Ned.
Hellish good memory sir! hellish good!!!!
Writing style shames most “pro’s”.
Good on ya.
Thank you Oskar. Being out of town the last few days I hadn’t seen the Ropey table yet but you and H2H made it a good race.
NBN.. The referee in that clip is nattily attired and mustachioed, I must say. 🙂
In the first clip that is. Swansea referee not in the same class. 🙂
BTW, congrats to Alexis for PFA Fans’ player of the season award. Well deserved.
Proves two things: he is the best player, and we have the most passionate and internet-literate fans. 🙂
Jack’s goal winning the goal of the season further proves the second point. 🙂
Morning all, off to Shenley. A late post this evening will reveal all.
Many thanks, all. Glad you enjoyed the piece. This club has a great history.
And they think this doesn’t go all the way to septic the enlarged bladder?
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/swiss-police-detain-soccer-officials-ahead-fifa-congress-053641840–sow.html
Yeah, right.
Ooh, Holic ! You old tease ! 😉
Excellent piece of historical research there Ned.
Now let’s go break a record.
Please have a re-vote on the venues for the world cup… and for FIFA to be disbanded and/or reformed completely!!
Down with the corrupted buggers!
Septic Bladder, Head of Fixing International Football Affairs for decades will doubtless get off scot free – whatever it is they are being charged with.
He will claim ignorance of all wrong doing, and absolve himself of any responsibility by laying the blame squarely at the door of those who report to him and maintain him in his position at the top of his flawed and discredited organisation.
I doubt anyone will want to implicate him in any wrong doing as he probably has a whole lot more shit to throw at them should they feel so inclined.
The entire shooting match should be sacked or imprisoned in the light of the treatment of workers in Qatar, and the next two World Cups reallocated to countries who can, firstly, organise them properly and, secondly, possess human rights records that make them suitable venues in the first place.
FIFA should quite simply be disbanded. The existing structure and all the affiliated groupings are clearly rotten to the core.
And, Blatter has to go to jail.
Trev @ 32: Well said, especially about the WC infrastructure building “efforts” in the desert. However, given the enormous amount of things that are now owned and sponsored by organizations (including, alas, our own key sponsor) that are similarly tied all across the world I would not expect any change in that aspect.
bath @ 33: The thing is the current FIFA hierarchy is loved in much of Africa, Asia and parts of Central and Latin America, not necessarily by the regular football followers especially of European leagues but by the respective football federations . Partly because of money thrown in those federations, and I am sure a lot of that involves corruption, but also because of increasing inclusivity: world cups in Africa and Asia, more countries from those continents participating in WC etc.
He certainly should, bath.
Wouldn’t hold my breath though.
If anyone can wriggle out of this Blatter can.
Pop goes his Nobel Peace Prize however. 😀
The major sponsors can certainly influence FIFA’s onward direction of travel but that brings us back to filthy lucre again doesn’t it?
Blatter is certainly supported in the third world countries and as you say, Faustus, some of that (at a voting level) will be due to the backhanders. However there are reports that kids in at least one African country are still playing on the mud pitches that a retired high profile ex-pro played on as a kid. At least one example where the money didn’t reach the grass roots. Where did it go? Your guess is as good as mine.
trev, i’m not holding my breath either, though hoping he rots there is definitely an option. nor am i going to turn blue for him to not be reelected this week (or whenever). and not to wish ill on anyone, but were he to keel over dead i’d not weep a tear.
but even that, i fear, wouldn’t improve the situation at FIFA. lord acton was too right. faustus’s point about the cash thrown to africa/asia/central/south america…that does go all the way down to the locals, supposedly, but then yields brazil’s $15B world cup, which contained very little of the infrastructural improvements promised in the bid. the fat cats get fatter, and they’re not going to bite the hand that launders money into their supper dish.
on a separate note, i think a good summer might be vidal, benzema and cech arriving at arsenal. coq is a perfect age to come in behind vidal, benzema is an alternative to the giroud/theo axis, and cech, helmet and all, *should* be better than either ospina or woj. of the three i’d hope we can find a courtois or other keeper of similar quality and not get cech… and lloris? i think not.
This morning when I woke up to the news of the arrests, I thought that it was a good start and hopefully in time it would snowball into something bigger. But having followed events over the day I am starting to feel that Bladder is already all but finished, as is FIFA as we know it. UEFA (not a bastion of upstanding morals themselves) have just said they want the election postponed which means that others will most likely follow, and the authorities are tightening the noose. The FBI basically said “just you wait and see, we have only started” and once you start arresting people by the shedloads you can be damn sure there will be a paper trail or someone who will link Bladder to everything that has been going on.
This is a day of joy and celebration. I know a rotten government may very well be followed by an equally rotten one, but at least now we have hope.
True Lars. I don’t see Platini and UEFA as any kind of white knights on chargers. If the paper trails don’t lead to some of them I would be very surprised.
bath/scruz: The problem is, as you pointed out, FIFA is essentially an ungovernable organization. A non-profit non-transparent non-charity organization with their own internal rules of governance and not answerable to anyone and sitting on billions of dollars and in charge of hundreds of billions of more commercial revenues that relies on monetizing the sentiments of billions people. It is like a cult. And I agree with you changing personnel would not really change how it operates. It prides itself from being apolitical — and there is something to be said about withstanding the political pressures especially in many ill-governed countries — and that allure explains its surprising resilience despite the odious lack of transparency and the general heavy-handedness.
The disease that cause all these symptoms of rotting flesh in FIFA — and in UEFA, and even FA etc. — is well known but I am afraid we do not have the stomach to really accept that: our own unwillingness or inability to move ourselves off Football (stop watching or following it) at any level to make our disagreements count. True for the jobless Madridista, true for the Nepalese school teacher whose jobless cousin is dying in the desert to “build” stadium for the next world cup where he will cheer for Brazil or Argentina, true for you and I who buy Arsenal shirts with “Fly Emirates” on our chest.
In an absurd and mostly disgusting world of commerce, Football is one of those things we think saves us from becoming equally disgusting, but our habits too feed the machinery.
So, let us curse the lot, but let us also not pretend that we are only the victims. 🙂
Lars @ 39: I am afraid at the end of the day some form of status quo would again realign where the best interests of those who earn hundreds of billions through sponsorship would be protected. Maybe FIFA will build their headquarters in the Vietnam next time. 🙂
Evening all. Stand easy. The new post will be tomorrow morning so you can enjoy Ned’s work and FIFAs implosion a little longer. 🙂
faustus, just to be clear, i’m not even considering myself a victim. compared with the slave laborers in qatar, the victims of malappropriation of local funds in russia, etc., i get off unscathed. for me it’s about arsenal, then about the larger world of football, and i have no skin in that latter game.
there’s not much to be done about *any* trans-governmental organization that is hugely wealthy, not least FIFA because their money is welcome worldwide and the sport it represents is the most popular game in the world. they’ve found ways to monetize that popularity, and there’s nothing to be done to stop it, excepting for clubs (like arsenal) to keep themselves as free from taint as they can, and to mitigate any taint with good works in the community (like arsenal).
i do think the voting process for where to host the tourneys can be altered, so that there are specific monies that must be given unto governments at local levels rather than just a pile of money to the central government to be absorbed by pocket after pocket all the way down the chain with nothing to show for it other than a bunch of new cars in the pocketed ones driveways (or whatever).
FIFA could actually be a force for *good* if they wanted to be, insofar as so many people who are passionate for football are poor. If they held to their mandate (as opposed to feathering their nests), they could actually engender social change from the ground up, and bring more and more of the people who create the game into a better world. but i am sure it’s just the utopian in me that considers that even remotely a viable path…
holic, i hope you found your nugget behind the rocking horse.
above, in my third paragraph i started thinking about the voting process and ended with post-voting process. please read as post-voting process (once awarded, preparing for the tourney, etc.).
scruz @ 44: Wonderful post. Yes, we are privileged indeed. We often forget how remarkably privileged we actually are.
I grew up in India. And even though the inevitable corruption (that type of money turns even the saints into black-marketers) eventually rot everything all through the nineties the attempt by BCCI (India’s cricket governing body) to better market the game was very well balanced with grass-root level development and had helped to create an ecosystem where children from backgrounds that could never dream of playing even for their state team can now aspire to be an international cricketer. So, social changes through sports as you pointed out, does and can happen. Not entirely utopian …
However when I look at Football and see what are considered the most successful teams in world football in recent years (not Santos, or Boca Juniors): Barcelona, Madrid, ManU … can we honestly say that these beloved clubs world over create/encourage/influence a pattern of behavior that discourages the corruption at the level of the governing body?
I would like to think we at Arsenal are different. I hope we are different. But there are times when I have my doubts.
So I watch the football. 🙂
Moving on to lighter entertainment …
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32895379
Yes, this actually happened. In an even celebrating league championship. Some would not let any chance of being a dickhead pass them by.
faustus, thanks. maybe not entirely utopian, but BCCI isn’t trans-national. if the FA was more like the BCCI the effect of FIFA’s transgressions would (i think) be lessened in england…and there would be hope for the english national team, assuming they taught tactics and technique, and not just kick and rush.
i honestly don’t think it trickles up. i think some of the methods might, insofar as large clubs have commercial teams that come up with ways to monetize their fanbase (god, that sounds ugly). FIFA can then take those methods and apply them to their own organization/needs; add the lack of any transparency (which transparency seems to be required due to market rules at the club level) and a trans-national juggernaut is suddenly defining just about everything in soccer outside of what the clubs can choose to do themselves. clubs probably DO encourage certain behaviors that will keep the rich rich, but that’s hard to quantify. thankfully, arsenal chooses things like GOSH, the gap year program, and the other things ‘holic wrote about the other day as a way to exercise the things it can do to help the community and to stand out as exemplars in the club crowd.
oh, and mourinho is a cunt, dyed in the wool.
what we need
now is
.
.
.
a cba-style post
with cows, home-made likker
and wilco from the speakers.
no shite this time.
just mud, and light.
I pass over Wembley and think to myself, I will hopefully be seeing you again sometime, preferably sooner rather than later.
My concluding words in my post-cup final post (or drink) last season as I turned for home. My expectations of Arsenal going straight back, never mind yours truly, were somewhat on the low side. I know we have form for appearing in successive Cup Finals, but still.
I know I am blessed, and I know there are countless hard core fans, hard luck stories every one of them, who will miss out on tickets, whose only hope had been to supplicate themselves in front of the God that is the ticket ballot. I’ll try and salve my guilty conscience with the knowledge there will be serious numbers of celebrity Arsenal “fans” who are no more worthy than me of planking their oversized backsides on their overpriced seats, and won’t question for a second their entitlement to be there.
So to those who missed out, for what it is worth, I think the system stinks. I think the Football Family (patronising or what?) inheriting a single ticket for the showpiece final is a nonsense when it is at the expense of the participating clubs’ fans, especially when those tickets will end up as often as not in the hands of those self-same punters, but at grotesquely distorted prices. Exeter City (just as a for instance, I don’t have a particular axe to grind with them, honest) get tickets! Non league clubs, “local” clubs, charities, the list goes on – its a touts charter if you ask me. It is time they gave the Football Familya brief for the Charity Shield or whatever it is called these days, and released the 20000 or so allocation for the Cup back to the 2 clubs.
The Club Wembley ticket allocation is a bit more complicated and but for that scheme, Saturdays game may well have been played in Cardiff – nothing wrong with that from where I’m sat but an altogether different debate. Might not be the best time to question the motives of football administrators and the decisions made to fund the rebuilding of Wembley on this, of all days.
So, Saturday.
Drinks. Lunch. Friends. Drinks. Arsenal. Friends. Drinks. Silver. Drinks.
Cannot fecking wait!
It might be a long time before I get to go back. 😉
Nice one, zico.
I read a piece by Mick Dennis in the Express some time ago in which he was all in favour of giving the unsung heroes of football some reward for their efforts at grass roots.
By that he meant the referees, linesmen, groundsmen, club officials, etc. who often toil for nothing and without whom the game couldn’t go on. In his opinion, it was a good thing to reward them with a place at (what used to be) football’s showpiece event.
I do have some sympathy for the sentiment but, if the FA wants to be charitable, why don’t they issue the tickets for their charity event, The Community Shield ?
Some clubs might reach the Wembley final once in their existence. Imagine the heartache of decades long supporters who are unable to be there because the tickets have been sent to a club at the other end of the country.
At the Community Shield those worthy of some reward could see the League Champions vs the FA Cup Winners and experience Wembley Stadium for themselves.
Wouldn’t that be enough ?
Nice one z 🙂
Well, my alarm went off at 5.45, I was on the road at 6.30, at Shenley by 8, and have just finished typing the morning offering at 22.30. Not that I haven’t had a day that all but another 5 Gooners wouldn’t have killed for, I know, and I am truly grateful, but I am also truly Donald Ducked.
Good stuff Zico
Trust you are keeping well,
Holic of course,as of tonight,is one of those unfortunates not to have won a ticket in what passes for a ballot these days.
My brother got one,my sister and nephew didn’t.
I see tickets for the final are available for a kings ransom from our friendly touts.
cheers
The Sweeper
Hello Clive. I am on the lookout for a couple, one a mate who is coming over from Spain and is more deserving than most who trouser the ‘football family” tickets. It cannot go on, and word reached me today that the FA are preparing to review their allocation policy in future. Let’s hope that is true.
I hope you are well, sir. It is so good to see you back here. 🙂
Indeed it should be Trev.
If the tickets going to all and sundry came back to the market at face value and ended up in the hands of the fans there would be less to moan about – but we know they will end up on eBay and worse.
As Clive confirms. Good to see you back here Mr Waterman, by the way.
Holic, for braving the M25 you should reward yourself with a dram. And then post! 😉
Blimey, Andy King is dead at 58.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcL3wNZHVM8
I remember that goal very very well, even after all these years.
Embargo until 6am tomorrow, z 😉
I saw that Cynic. Same age as me. Guess how it made me feel. 🙁
I have to admit, I tend to feel worse when thinking “You old sod” about somebody and then realising they are younger than me 🙂
🙂
Brad Friedel was the last one.
Depressingly, Blatter will survive, as he always seems to do. He worked out long ago that in a one-country-one-vote system a handful of votes from the smallest nations anywhere in the world cancel out the votes of the European footballing powerhouses. FIFA is self-perpetuating, corrupt oligarchy. Such regimes only collapse if there is both significant organised dissent from below and deep divisions within their elites. Blatter has eliminated internal opposition and it is difficult to see who will foment a grass-roots revolt and be prepared to give up their place by the honeypot to do so. It would take the broadcasters and multinational companies that pay the media rights and provide the sponsorship to pull their money — and if they do, I dread to think how even more money grubbing would be what they would put in FIFA’s place.
Ned,
First of all may i say well done – a magnificent post of Max Hastings proportions! Though I do think this time Blatter will be bagged. When the US Justice Dept get involved you can be reasonably sure that there will be ramifications.
Zico,
I make no secret of the fact that I will be as jealous as hell of you this weekend just as I was this time last year. Apart from watching the game the prospect of sharing that experience with some top class people is a real treasure. The fact that you “get that” and are so understanding and conscious of the myriad of people who won’t get to attend makes me hope that you squeeze every ounce of pleasure from the experience mate! You do deserve it for all the trips you usually make and the wonderful accounts you post in the aftermath.
I am on beach off the coast of Africa on a family holiday. My week presents different challenges……but even if I have to “row ashore” to see the game…..I will. And i will be with you all in spirit!
Everyone here is younger than me, Cynic. 🙁 (subject to correction). But you get used to it, trust me. Especially when you get proven right… 😉
Öskar
Blatter and FIFA remind me of the bad old days of Samaranch and the IOC. Both ‘godfathering’ corrupt organisations.
Öskar
Not good publicity for the game we love, let alone the corrosive effects of corruption on the game’s future. When will Blatter fall on his sword, or must someone stick the knife in?
Cheers Joe,
All made possible by the Barman and a Top patron in here.
Enjoy your desert island – I can recommend Invincibles by Amy Lawrence, and Veedon Fleece by Van Morrison. Luxury item? This here iPad and a reliable stream????
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Joe@63: There will be ramifications, no doubt. I only fear that they will not fall on Blatter who will position himself as the champion of corruption-fighting. He will be able to win the election to stay on as president. He has the necessary votes in his pocket. His two biggest risks are first, that Fifa’s commercial backers desert the World Cup. If that happens he will find others outside the Western multinational corporations. Hand on heart: will you boycott watching the next World Cup, or support your national association in not sending your national team to play in it (and will they be able to afford not to)? The second risk is that someone among the arrested sings — and can produce the evidence — that Blatter’s is personally on the take so he faces criminal charges somewhere. That could happen but his fingerprint’s have been noticeably absent throughout. I find the whole prospect depressingly dismal.