The FIFA obsession with expensive watches led to another farcical episode at their Best Awards in Zurich this week.

Six Hublot Big Bang watches, worth around £10,000 each, were due to be presented to the individual winners.

But they disappeared somewhere between FIFA headquarters and the Zurich TV studios where the event was being staged.

Cristiano Ronaldo was named FIFA's Player of the Year at 'The Best' awards ceremony

Watches worth £10,000 were meant to be awarded to the winners but went missing

Hublot representatives found another range of their watches at the last minute to present to the winners, who included Cristiano Ronaldo and Claudio Ranieri.

But it was ridiculous that FIFA were handing out luxury watches following the fiasco of the 2014 FIFA Congress delegates having to return the £16,000 Parmigiani timepieces given to them as gifts by Brazil's football confederation.

Those delegates included FA chairman Greg Dyke (right), who wasn't even allowed to donate his Parmigiani to charity and was in hot water with FIFA for not immediately handing it back.

Coach of the Year Ranieri is likely to be nonplussed by the Hublot fuss because he is an ambassador for rival brand Tag Heuer.

A FIFA spokesman said: 'We are looking into what happened to the watches. They went missing somewhere.'

Winners of awards at 'The Best' ceremony pose with their trophies on Monday evening

The increasing gulf between the media and players in major sports was demonstrated on Monday night by the absence of current performers at the Rugby Union Writers' Club awards dinner, which used to attract the stars of the game.

The lack of contact is not helped by sport's army of communications operatives acting as gatekeepers rather than facilitating face-to-face access.

Eddie Jones speaks to the audience at the Rugby Union Writers' Club dinner on Monday

The Caribbean Football Union, who represent 31 of CONCACAF's 41 national associations, are considering breaking away and forming a seventh FIFA confederation.

They see this as a way of improving their TV revenues, which have been squeezed by three successive CONCACAF presidents from Caribbean countries facing numerous corruption charges that include allegedly helping themselves to the region's TV rights money.

Meanwhile, UEFA's stranglehold over world football is demonstrated by their annual revenue being four times that of FIFA.

President of CONCACAF, Victor Montagliani, speaks to the media in Zurich on Tuesday

FIFA need a proper venue such as next year's proposed site, Wembley Arena, to take their Best Awards to the next level.

A Swiss TV studio on the outskirts of Zurich, with a bussed-in crowd outside to provide artificial atmosphere, is no place to crown the world player of the year.

Football rogues escape

Two of the biggest rogues in the FIFA gallery look unlikely to face justice anytime soon. There is no extradition agreement with Brazil, where demonstrably corrupt former football chief Ricardo Teixeira has returned to hide away in the Rio Olympic district of Barra.

And Jack Warner's lawyers in Trinidad have stalled extradition orders going back to 2002.

Football's crooks who have so far escaped the law will be very relieved when Loretta Lynch — who has led the US justice department's fight against football corruption — stands down as US Attorney General in April.

Donald Trump-appointed law enforcers are not expected to have the same appetite to extend the caseload from the US crackdown on FIFA wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Jerome Valcke, the disgraced former FIFA secretary general banned from all football for 12 years, is now living in Barcelona. He has opened a sports consultancy there, with his new base handy for reaching his yacht, which is moored in Sardinia.

Former FIFA general-secretary Jerome Valcke is now living in Barcelona

The Jockey Club's spin on their shameful plan to close historic Kempton Park and sell it for development makes no mention of the total mess the Jockey Club have made of all-weather racing at the track.

They hyped it as being a great London sporting attraction when it was never anything of the sort.

The Jockey Club plans to close Kempton Park and sell it on for development