Why Dave Richards' exit could torpedo England's shambolic World Cup bid - Martin Lipton's tea-time digest
What's the quickest way to lose the World Cup?
Fight among yourselves like ferrets in a sack - and let the world laugh at you.
You would have thought, after so many mistakes and mis-calculations, that the FA and Premier League would consider actually getting along for the next 13 months in the run-up to the 2018 decision by FIFA.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
And Premier League chairman Sir Dave Richards' shock resignation from the 2018 bid board that was only restructured less than a fortnight ago could be the final torpedo sinking the ship.
While the England bid has to be led by the Football Association, as the governing body, the global success of the Premier League is the economic powerhouse behind the whole bid idea.
The 2018 bid is about showcasing English football, the stadia, clubs and superstars that make it the pre-eminent competition in the whole of football - and that means the Premier League.
If that League is not fully behind both the bid and its leader, Wembley head Lord Triesman, then the final outcome is inevitable - humiliating defeat when the votes from FIFA's 24-man executive committee are counted.
Richards' resignation was a blatant and public vote of no confidence in Triesman, a distress flare sent up in the hope that others in and around the campaign will rally to the League's cause and force through a change at the very top of the FA.
Coming so soon after Triesman assured reporters that he had full support from the League, this represents in-fighting on a huge scale, signalling the mess that the campaign has degenerated into.
Triesman, hit by the body-blow, has two options now - fight or run.
His instincts, honed by those years in the political bear-pit that is the modern day Labour Party, will be to stand his ground and face down the blatant challenge to his authority.
Running will make him look a quitter, like a man who never believed in what he was doing, who was only ever in it for the money.
Yet the fight will be harder with the cash-generating element of the English game so evidently ranged against him, wanting him out.
Quite what FIFA will make of it is tougher to call. But it cannot do the 2018 bid any good at all.
You just wish somebody could bang heads together and stop this self-indulgent power-jousting from happening time and time again. It does, however, seem like a very vain hope.
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