“‘Please accept my resignation. I wouldn’t belong to a club that would accept me as a member’, said the telegram that Groucho Marx in his famous telegram to the Friar’s Club of Beverly Hills, and the Football Association must be inwardly feeling the same as Marx with their admission that recent press revelations into the behaviour of various senior FIFA delegates has had an extremely damaging effect on their bid to host the 2018 World Cup. The FA had apparently at first thought that they had managed to escape the ire of those at the top of the world’s governing body over the revelations made by The Sunday Times, but with an edition of the BBCs Panorama on the subject also due to be shown before the vote next month it is now widely anticipated that the award will go to Russia.” (twohundredpercent)

“I read a statistic the other day which gave me pause for thought: Russia, the world’s largest country by area, takes up approximately 11.5% of the Earth’s entire land mass. Actually as a journalist covering Russia I’ve have to learn by rote a good number of shorthand statistics to express the country’s size. 7,500 kilometres from East to West; a ten hour flight from its Baltic to Pacific coasts; nine time zones (thought it used to be eleven until earlier this year).” (The Football Ramble)