On the occasion of UEFA’s Top Executive Programme strategy meeting, held this week in Malta under the chairmanship of Michel Platini, Lino Bugeja reflects on the precarious situation the noble game of football is currently in.

The participation of European teams is crucial for the success of the World Cup.

The time is long past when it was necessary to introduce this topic with flowering eulogies to football.

We have been overtaken by events and this game, previously labelled as “the workman’s game”, assumed until recently magical powers and was hailed as one of the major “discoveries” of the turbulent 19th century.

Had the author of ‘The Fountain of Youth’, Ponce de Leon, been alive today he would know where to find the golden spring.

This extraordinary development so mani-festly demonstrated during the Champions League and other UEFA encounters has elevated football as a seasonal expectation.

Undoubtedly, association football is now the most popular team sport in the entire world. In fact, UEFA membership exceeds the United Nations list, signalling that “sports geography” is far more eloquent than political boundaries.

For repressed people under dictatorial regimes, football means much more than its physical dimensions. The film ‘More than Just a Game’, released before the 2010 World Cup, records life at the infamous prison in Robben Island.

It’s a symbol of South Africa’s apartheid regime and how playing football in this prison saved the inmates from despair, offering a crumb of hope and respite as the archival letters now starkly reveal.

It is indeed a triumph of the human spirit against great odds and how five political prisoners, through the organisation of a football league, kept the hope of survival flickering and their spirits high.

I personally witnessed such stories on my travels to Africa and Asia with children clinging to their football as if it were their umbilical cord.

Unfortunately, recent events in the highest echelons of the footballing world, namely FIFA, have sent shockwaves throughout the world with serious allegations of corruption and deceit.

The noble game, which we have cherished since its introduction in Malta in 1893, is now at the cross-roads… its credibility is at stake.

This sacred icon which has shaped the life of my generation is being debased and an air of cynicism is around us casting a long dark shadow on the game we love.

However, I strongly believe in the peculiar resilience of football and the undoubted massive support of the European federation without whose participation the World Cup would be a major flop.

Given the rectitude of UEFA, with Michel Platini at its helm, football can bounce back and emerge stronger than ever.

In the present circumstances UEFA should emulate the IOC who, at the Baden Baden Congress of 1981, set up the Athletes’ Commission with Sebastian Coe as its first chairman.

Its role is to look after the duties and responsibilities of all athletes and to ensure that they do not have to endure physical or psychological harm.

Undoubtedly, playing football in extreme heat and at ungodly hours is detrimental to the players and the game itself.

UEFA is still in time to extricate itself from the 2022 Qatar World Cup and give its players a fair deal.

Particularly in this century, more and more countries in the industrialised world are turning to sport to promote their corporate image, splashing their names and cash on sports with the greatest exposure in which football stands supreme.

Clean image

Increasingly, football is being identified by industry and commerce as an attractive vehicle through which they may project their image.

However, sponsors demand a clean image of sport, an impression that helps boost sales and improve profits.

Furthermore, the commercial community offering a sponsorship demands honesty in order to be viewed as making a valid contribution for the good of society.

Without the participation of European nations and players militating in our leagues, major sponsors would withdraw their support.

This is Europe’s major trump card that will help UEFA table a motion in favour of “weighting” at FIFA congresses based on world rankings by which the first 10 nations will have five votes each, the second 10 four votes each and so on with the last 50 electing five members to represent them with one vote each.

Paradoxically, this is an equitable solution to prevent past anomalies and give more dignity and prestige to our noble game.