Blatter's numbers add up in fight for future of our game

The leaders of the opposing factions are not easy men to admire. FIFA boss Sepp Blatter comes across as an arrogant sermoniser whose eclectic CV includes spearheading a campaign to encourage female players to wear tighter shorts and calling for the abolition of draws. As for the Premier League's Richard Scudamore, that pliant placeman of the Big Four sacrificed any residual respect for his judgment and motives on the altar of his 39th game.

Leaving aside the personal, their difference of opinion boils down to this. Herr Blatter wishes our leading clubs (and this campaign is clearly targeted at England) to strike a better balance between importing foreign stars and nurturing native talent by being restricted to a maximum five foreign players per team from the 2012-13 season onward.

Mr Scudamore's interest begins and ends with enriching the Premier League and its grandest members, which means enabling the latter to guarantee annual Champions League riches and maximise TV income by stuffing their sides with imports.

The injustice of a policy that entrenches the Big Four's supremacy while diminishing any prospect of England challenging for major trophies concerns neither him nor an FA that has betrayed its paramount duty by remoulding itself as the Premier League's respectful servant.

Showing just the sort of mealy-mouthed hypocrisy you'd expect, Brian Barwick agrees that FIFA's idea should be "explored", but adds: "We believe in the meritocracy of players on performance and ability first and foremost." He is too scared of offending the mighty Blatter not to pay lip service to the idea, in other words, but will support Scudamore all the way.

On Thursday Blatter will meet with European Union officials to argue for an amendment to the EU law which, by guaranteeing the free movement of employees within its borders, stifles his ambition. And he's absolutely right. Although I didn't squander three years of my life failing Law Society exams by the widest margins ever recorded to lecture anyone about the nuances of complex legislation, I do know this.

That law was conceived primarily to enable the movement of migrant workers from poorer EU nations to richer ones; not to facilitate already lavishly paid sportsmen becoming obscenely paid for the benefit of the Russian, American and Thai plutocrats who own our clubs.

There is no sound reason why a specific exemption cannot be made for football. At the very least, the number of non-EU nationals could be capped at one per club, and loopholes like the one Arsene Wenger has so cunningly exploited by channelling young Africans through Belgium should be closed.

If Blatter loses, as seems likely, we must reconcile ourselves to the dreary inevitability of the same quartet filling the Champions League places in perpetuity; a future in which the dearth of English talent will intensify at such pace that Fabio Capello's successor may be obliged to raid the Championship.

Herr Blatter may not be an appealing character, but with our own football authorities abrogating all responsibility to safeguard the cultural identity of domestic football and strengthen the national team, he becomes the English fan's best friend on "my enemy's enemy" grounds. Besides, the slimness of his chances makes him the kind of rank underdog we all adore.

I wish him luck.

Pointless trip to Trinidad simply a reminder of McClaren's failure

The sense of pathos was almost as overpowering as the sense of drowsiness as David Beckham captained England against Trinidad & Tobago for a second time last night.

Who would have thought that we'd ever look back on the first time - that 2006 World Cup match in which they took 83 minutes to score - as a comparative golden age?

This time two goals came in the early minutes rather than the sweat-inducingly closing ones, and you could have been excused for forgetting that there's no such thing these days - come on, join in; you know the rest - as an easy game in international football.

There is such a thing as a humiliatingly pointless one, however, and here it was. A friendly to drive Fabio Capello wild with bemusment, arranged by the FA purely to say a sycophantic "Evenin' all!" to CONCACAF boss Jack Warner in the misguided hope that he'll swing his region behind England's 2018 World Cup bid. You'd have to go back a very long way for a more poignant reminder of England failure than this fixture...all the way to Saturday night, in fact, when that winsome lad took the Britain's Got Talent title by dancing to Singing In The Rain, thereby proving that you can win a major fixture with a brolly in your hand after all.

Queen of darts prepares to take on the beasts

A momentous sporting event approaches. On Thursday, Anastasia Dobromyslova will become darts' answer to Michelle Wie by becoming the first woman to play in a men's event.

The crucial thing is to have a decent nickname, and I suggest Anastasia changes hers to "The Grand Duchess of Darts". Or better still, for an elfin blonde with Slavik cheek bones, "Aphrodarty".

Who'd have dreamt that the citadel defended by "One Dart" Peter Manley, Andy "The Pieman" Smith and all the other polyester juggernauts would ever be stormed by a 23-year-old Russian beauty who takes a bra cup five sizes smaller than Phil "The Power" Taylor?

I cannot wait to see her debut at the UK Open, let alone to hear Sid Waddell pronounce on sport's most significant feminist breakthrough since Billy Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs.

A Wasp who survived a nasty sting

For all the compliments lavished on Lawrence Dallaglio, who retired from chasing the egg by winning rugby union's Premiership title with Wasps on Saturday, fondness seemed hard to discern. His old England colleague Lewis Moody's laconic tribute ("not much fun to play against"). suggested someone bidding farewell to an infestation of pubic lice.

Dallaglio encapsulated everything that makes rugger buggers so gruesome (the boarding school prefect swagger, the self-righteous bombast).

Still, he was quite a player, and he did something unusual by surviving a red-top expose (cocaine, of course). So there is hope for victims of the classic News of the World sting.

Although not much, you suspect, for Max Mosley, learns his fate tomorrow.