Opinion: FIFA president has lost the plot

Sepp Blatter was once splendidly described by one of his compatriots as "a man who has 50 new ideas a day and 51 of them are bad". One suspects that his latest must have been his 52nd and saddest brainstorm at the end of a particularly trying day.

It is not so much that abolishing draws in football would be a terrible idea - which it is - but that it would be an utterly pointless change to something which has worked matchlessly well in the world's game since its inception more than a century ago.

The problem here, though, is that Blatter is an old man with a monstrous ego who feels he has not much time left in his job as FIFA's president to stamp a supposedly indelible mark on the game. Such preening individuals are exceedingly dangerous because they are the ones who will meddle where no meddling is needed. Hence, the stream of desperate schemes and tournaments he has spouted.

Clearly, he has this grand vision of himself being seen as a revolutionary long after he's gone. Perhaps he has this idea that by bringing football into line with US sports, where a winner is demanded, he will be seen as the visionary who globalised soccer by conquering America.

No chance. Football is different. Week in week out, draws work in football, even in this impatient age. Have you come away from a match on a Saturday evening feeling cheated because you've not seen a definitive conclusion with some tedious once-fortnightly or oncemonthly penalty shoot-out? Me neither.

We've had to learn to get used to shoot-outs for knock-out Cup fare and that's enough, thank you. League fare needs no gimmicks. It's designed to find champions at football, not champions at taking penalties.