Football: It is time we left FIFA - 'For the Good of the Game'

Today, I call upon the Football Association to have some backbone and to leave FIFA. Recently, we have seen BBC Panorama exposing yet more corruption and bribery dominating football's governing body. Let's stand up for the traditional British values of democracy and fair play and leave this corrupt and scandalous organisation.

Last year the Football Association put together an outstanding bid to host the Football World Cup, with  political big beasts and some of English football's biggest characters came together and proclaimed that football was coming home. Sepp Blatter, taking a very anti-British line, spoke of how football was invented in China and then spoke of how it was Britain that developed the rules. Well Mr Blatter, for it to be considered a game surly it has to have rules?

It has not been the first time that corruption has been exposed in the top eschelans of FIFA, however this time FIFA, in response to the growing criticism and the recent Panorama programme, has sought to investigate the corruption claims made by the television show about Jack Warner and Mohammed Bin Hamman - who is seeking to contest the FIFA presidency against Sepp Blatter. You just couldn't make it up; all Football Associations will have a choice between two devious, manipulative and shady individuals. No wonder the FA has chosen to abstain.

The FA does not have the backbone to leave FIFA and I suspect given half the chance that a number of the 'old boys' who seems to dominate these kind of associations would be guilty of some of the same charges had they the opportunity. For the FA to leave FIFA it would actually reactionary and give the world the impression that we are soar little Englishmen who cannot accept defeat. Perhaps we should have blown the whistle on corruption in FIFA much earlier and forfeited the chance to hold the World Cup but, as a historian, I am it is always dangerous to say 'what if' and 'in hindsight.'

One would prefer the FA to leave FIFA and set up a rival governing organisation to be controlled in London, seeing as the rules of Association Football were devised on our green playing fields and not on some all-weather artifial pitches in the desert. I think if we went ahead then it would not be long before other countries would follow in our footsteps. It's time that we stop complaining about FIFA and actually did something - if perhaps a little radical - about it.