Why I can't back our bid for the Corporate Cup

All things being equal I would "back the bid" to host the World Cup here in 2018, as the FA are exhorting us all to do, as enthusiastically as anyone.

True, I have problems with international football.

"Our" national anthem asks a being which does not exist to intervene on the part of the holder of an office which shouldn't, so don't ask me to sing it.

And I can't help but see the flag of St George as a symbol of the EDL, the BNP and all the most loathsome elements of English society.

I don't think that England's poor performance in South Africa signalled a national crisis, just a rather typical failure to invest, so that what we have ended up with is a team which with a couple of exceptions is made up of players who on the world stage are rather ordinary.

In the wider world of professional football, we are increasingly subjected to all of the unpleasantness that has inevitably accompanied the corporate takeover of the game.

This reaches its nadir with Fifa and their World Cup.

So when you "back the bid," you should be aware what it is you're backing, and why it is indeed likely that England will win the right to host the tournament.

First, any talk of this being a profitable enterprise for "UK plc," or, more fancifully still, for the country's inhabitants, can be dismissed as outright lies.

The most that the host country can hope to do is minimise their losses to the extent that these represent a worthwhile investment when measured in terms of intangible benefits - basically, seeing the world's greatest players and hosting a big international party.

To these, if the tournament is well-organised, may be added prestige, and a boost to the country's reputation.

Losing a certain amount of money on the tournament is therefore not the problem in my view, though the lack of any real public discussion of a bid which is now a done deal is outrageous.

The real problem, however, is corporate control of the proceedings.

When England hosted the World Cup in 1966 there were various attempts to cash in by firms big and small, which in itself is hardly a crime. Yet there was no official beer of the 1966 Fifa World Cup, no diktat as to who could sell what where, and no demand that Britain give up its sovereign rights.

Now, if England wants to host the 2018 version, the British government will have to agree to a whole host of extraordinary conditions. These include total exemption from taxes for all of Fifa's tournament-related activities in the country.

Fifa officials will have to be given priority access to motorways in the areas where matches are to take place, though it's unclear just what this will involve.

The federation will aggressively defend the "rights" of the tournament's sponsors.

South Africa, this summer's hosts, were required to reform their laws to allow certain aspects of this, though Britain's legal system is already so corporate-friendly that this may not be necessary here.

In one well-publicised incident in this summer's World Cup, a group of young women attending a Holland game in short orange dresses, which to be polite about it were clearly designed to be eye-catching, were thrown out of a game and arrested because they were advertising Bavaria beer, which was not officially in on the corporate feeding frenzy.

This is known as "ambush marketing," though "ambush" would be better applied to the stealing of the world's greatest sporting events by sponsors.

Sponsors will be given exclusive rights to sell and advertise their wares in the streets to a distance of two kilometres - almost one and a quarter miles - around each stadium, or any other venue where a World Cup-related event is taking place.

So if you go to a city centre to watch a game on a big screen, you'd better take your own beer.

Otherwise you might find yourself drinking Budweiser, the US version that is, which is an experience about as palatable as losing 4-1 to Germany.

Souvenirs, snacks, drinks - anything and everything will be subject to these restrictions should Fifa demand it.

A couple of years ago I bought a scarf for my granddaughter at a very reasonable price. I was on my way to a match at Eastlands, Manchester City's stadium.

The man who sold it to me was quite a way from home and he explained in his Brummy accent that he had lost his job and found that he could scrape a living by buying football memorabilia and selling it outside games where a decent crowd was expected. He said that as long as he didn't go too near the stadium, the clubs couldn't stop him and the police turned a blind eye.

He wasn't anything like one and a quarter miles away from where the game would be played.

Chatting to him and completing our small transaction was a pleasant human experience of the kind that the corporate world would like to put an end to.

Try that sort of thing at Fifa's World Cup and you'll find yourself in some very deep trouble.

We are always told that capitalism is a fine system because it encourages competition and therefore eliminates the inefficient.

This kind of monopolistic practice reveals this to be a lie. Yet Fifa gets away with it.

This is partly because countries are scared that if they query any of the restrictions, they will lose out to a more compliant bidder, and partly because the same corporations that run Fifa also run most governments, and in Britain of course they control all three major parties.

And so, as I've always reflected, football provides a microcosm of the system, especially in this case the race-to-the-bottom which is neoliberal economics.

England may well win the right to be the 2018 host nation.

It will do so however, not for any reasons of which we can be proud, but because our country is already a corporate paradise.