SWANNY'S WORLD OF SPORT: FIFA remains stupid, Cobblers boss hung out to dry

I didn’t think it was possible to run FIFA more stupidly than Sepp Blatter, but his successor as president Gianni Infantino is busily proving me wrong.

Of course hopeless nations with no chance of reaching the finals in their current format would vote for the changes which are due to take effect in 2026, but this doesn’t make it a good thing.

It should be a challenge, a huge goal, to get to the biggest sporting tournament on the planet. It shouldn’t be open to any Tom, Dick, Harry or Gordon Strachan. It’s too easy now to qualify for the World Cup hence England’s acceptance of having Gareth Southgate in charge. Failing will soon be impossible so why not just employ a nice, scandal-free bloke rather than a natural-born winner.

BOSS UPSETS THE EASILY OFFENDED

It wasn’t the best of weekends for Northampton Town manager Rob Page.

He was sacked from his glorious mission (I assume it was) to take Cobblers straight back down to League Two before he could complete it, less than 48 hours after upsetting social media by claiming his side’s hilarious 5-0 defeat at Bristol Rovers was like ‘men against girls.’ I do hope the incidents were unrelated.

I could understand his clumsy soundbite upsetting his players, but no, most offence was taken by the easily outraged on Twitter, including one lady who smeared another critic by calling him an ‘in-bred n****’. The lack of self-awareness was as usual staggering.

Page meant no offence with his heat-of-the-moment comment. Don’t hang him for it.

And Cobblers are the latest club to suffer from an inflated sense of self-worth

They won League Two at a canter last season, but lost their outstanding manager and at least four top players. What on earth did they expect was going to happen at a higher level with a weaker side?

Maybe the Cobblers hierarchy should wonder why so many star performers couldn’t wait to hotfoot it out of Sixfields in the summer and address those problems rather than shoot the bloke hired to sort out the mess.