Stupidity has overtaken hard cash as the main currency in world soccer.

How else can you possibly explain the tragi-comedy that cost Sam Allardyce his job as England manager last week? Big Sam was breathtakingly indiscreet as he was shown negotiating a £400 000 deal to represent a firm seeking advice on the transfer market.

He also made crude remarks about Roy Hodgson and others, not crimes in themselves, but enough for him to suffer acute embarrassment.

Where he really stepped into it was claiming he could help skirt rules banning transfers. I watched the video sting this week and almost had to look away, knowing that he was being set-up in the worst possible way.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but the newspaper sting was journalism in its lowest form. Allardyce called it entrapment and that’s exactly what it was, the cruellest of takedowns and a lousy way to end a man’s career. Allardyce’s foolishness is the greater offence, no doubt, but the mendacity of the UK broadsheet deserves no credit.

Allardyce should have been sharper, no question, but his hubris got the better of him. He got caught, hook, line and stinker.

What compounded his stupidity was that he had no real reason to go down this path. The England job paid £3-million a year, more than enough to make him a rich man.

The FA had no option but to negotiate his fast exit. He made them look stupid. He had to go.

Smartly, he did so without protest.

(At least accountability exists in English football, something anathema to South Africans who occupy high office).

English football now stands as a joke in international football, especially with the accompanying news that eight current and former Premiership managers have been accused of receiving bungs (illicit payments). Joey Barton’s recent book is full of the stuff and how it all went down with one particular manager.

If stupidity is increasingly what oils the great game, what of Fifa’s decision to shut down its anti-racism task force, apparently on the basis of its work being “completely fulfilled”.

Excuse me?

Even Yaya Toure, who sat on the committee, was baffled by the decision. And he should know. In 2013, he was racially abused during a Champions League game in Russia, where the 2018 World Cup is taking place.

Russia is a hotbed of insidious racism, and it’s getting worse. Nine months ago researchers at the Sova Centre and the Uefa-affiliated Fare Network logged 92 incidents of discriminatory displays and chants in and around stadiums last season. The previous two seasons had seen 83 such incidents.

Racism is ubiquitous in their game.

Zenit St Petersburg striker Hulk said he faced racist abuse in “almost every game” in Russia. And two years ago South Africa’s Siyanda Xulu was among a group of six black players dismissed by his manager in the Russian premier league as a “dark-skinned thing”.

Top club CSKA Moscow are no strangers to controversy either.

Last season, they had to play all three of their Champions League group-stage games behind closed doors – with no fans allowed in the stadium – after being punished by UEFA for a string of racist incidents involving their fans.

You think of the situation in Russia, where the racism is so overt, and you wonder how Fifa possibly decided that its work was done. All the decision speaks of is complacency and blatant disregard for what is happening under its watch. The evidence is everywhere.

Spain, too, is known as a hotbed of racism. Dani Alves famously responded to a fan throwing a banana at him in Villareal a few years ago by eating a banana while on the pitch. Samuel Eto’o did even better, having his picture taken while eating a banana as he sat perched on a Rolls Royce with the hashtag #weareallmonkeys.

The irony is that it is the players taking a stand rather than the s0-called guardians of the game, who face no obvious danger doing so.

Even by soccer’s sordid standards, this was an especially rotten week when stupidity rumbled through the game. Given soccer’s recent past, the portends for change are not promising. – © Sunday Tribune