Reading like the lineup for the most bizarre dinner party in history or a random trawl through a celebrity website, Fifa’s “VVIP” guest list for the World Cup final runs from the Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher to the Gabon president, Ali Bongo Ondimba.

Alongside those you might expect to be sitting with Fifa president Sepp Blatter, such as the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Vladmir Putin, the president of the next World Cup hosts Russia, are some more esoteric choices.

Kutcher, best known as the former boyfriend of Demi Moore and star of Two and a Half Men, joins a random selection of former international players including Olivier Dacourt and Marco Materazzi and Fabio Cannavaro.

LeBron James, the most famous name in basketball, was also present, along with a motley collection of musical stars roped in for the closing ceremony – Shakira (now on her second World Cup theme tune), Wyclef Jean and Carlos Santana.

The only obvious reason for also inviting Daniel Craig was so that organisers could boast thatthey had secured both LeBron James and James Bond.Carles Puyol and the supermodel Gisele made the cut by virtue of having been chosen to carry the World Cup on to the pitch in a specially made Louis Vuitton case, presumably as some sort of satire on Fifa opulence.

Other heads of state invited include the South African president, Jacob Zuma, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, and Gaston Brown, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda. Of course.At least the presence of Placido Domingo is no surprise – a friend of Blatter’s, to widespread incredulity he was once appointed to a short lived “solutions committee” to lead Fifa reform.