Today the Fifa taskforce has recommended that the 2022 World Cup be shifted from June to November, still in Qatar. November is of course cooler than June, when temperatures are 40C in the shade. It has taken Fifa, still besozzled with Qatari billions, five years to discover this fact. While dozens have continued to die in appalling conditions each year to build palaces in the sand, even more were expected to die in the heat of June. The World Cup is about death and money, not sport.

The survival of Fifa and its eternal ruler, Sepp Blatter, continues to defy belief. It is a monstrosity among global bureaucracies. The 2010 decision to choose Qatar was riddled with corruption, though it has taken the much-abused British press, year in year out, to prove it.

Fuelled by soccer hysteria enhanced by national chauvinism, Fifa feels it can do what it likes. This includes ridiculing its own “ethics” committee and censoring last year’s Garcia report on the 2010 Qatar farrago.

No less outrageous is the English Football Association’s appeasement of Fifa. This was despite the FA’s 2022 bid – backed by the royal family and David Cameron – being the humiliated victim of the 2010 corruption. When the FA wrote to Blatter last November demanding full publication of the Garcia report, he laughed in its face.

Six European federations demanded Fifa clean up its act. Three top commercial backers, Coca-Cola, Adidas and McDonald’s, did so too.

Such is Fifa’s arrogance that it called all their bluff.

The November decision is bad news for British football, removing top goal-scorers and audiences for a month at the height of the league season. A proposal to move the cup to January was vetoed since it would clash with the winter Olympics. The sports money mafia agree not to tread on each other’s revenues.

There is a simple solution to all this. The European associations could reassert the supremacy of sporting principles. They should resign from Fifa and set up a rival competition. The truth is they lack the guts. Or the FA could ban its players from taking part in so dishonest, and potentially dangerous, a tournament.

No such luck. When honesty clashes with money in sport, money wins. Fifa football is about money. Just money.