PREMIER LEAGUE:Fifa have a lot to answer for as they pursue political gains in the murky world of sport, writes Andrew Fifield

THE International Olympic Committee still refer, without a hint of irony, to the Olympic torch relay as a "journey of harmony".

You can trace its steps on the Beijing 2008 website, except rather than acting as a voyage of sporting idealism, it now resembles a 85,100-mile-long fuse leading to the powder-keg of Beijing. The explosion comes in 115 days' time.

Now, and for the rest of the summer, it will be China's occupation of Tibet tugging at our collective conscience but before Fifa starts feeling too pleased with itself - and Sepp Blatter hardly needs much encouragement to do that - football's governing body might care to start preparing answers to some pointed questions which will be arrowing their way ahead of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Laying aside the parochial pot-holes which litter the path to the Johannesburg final on July 11th, 2010 - the mass clearance of shanty town housing to make way for sparkling new stadia, the support for Robert Mugabe's tyrannical regime or the decrepit transport system - there is also the issue of whether the world's football family should give legitimacy to a government who refused to even acknowledge the need for retroviral drugs to combat the nation's Aids epidemic until late 2006, by which time over one in 10 South Africans had been diagnosed HIV positive.

The phrase "political football" has always had a razor-sharp double edge, primarily because there has never been a shortage of shady types willing to exploit football's unrivalled popularity around the globe.

Few have equalled the notoriety of Argentina's fascist dictator General Videla, who was unforgivably given the opportunity to parade his nasty regime before the watching world in the 1978 World Cup. Just as with the Beijing Games, there was talk of boycotts and walkouts; once again, the doubters allowed themselves to be appeased by a totalitarian's half-hearted promises of reform. Argentina's eventual triumph not only confirmed their considerable prowess, it also lent credibility to a tin-pot dictatorship responsible for the deaths and imprisonments of thousands.

It is never easy to sympathise with Fifa, a body which has always appeared more adept at stoking grievances than stamping them out, but picking a path through international football's moral quagmire is not an easy task.

If World Cups were awarded simply on the basis of logistics and ethics, South Africa would not even have made the shortlist for 2010. But fairness also comes into it, and the rich westerners who like to call themselves the game's moral guardians would have faced accusations of old-school imperialism had they stood and watched Europe's major leagues plunder the continent's vast natural resources while giving nothing back in return. In that sense, it is surely only right that Africa's most glittering talents - Drogba, Eto'o, Adebayor, the Toure brothers, Essien and the rest - be given the chance to dazzle on their native soil and in front of a truly global audience.

Herr Blatter and co would also be justified in raising an eyebrow at pious criticism from this corner of the footballing world. England's Premier League long since gave up the pretence of being any kind of moral standard bearer, with its elite clubs being run by the sort of people who would asset-strip their own grandmother if there was money to be made.

Chelsea's Roman Abramovich, the oligarch who ruthlessly squeezed every drop of profit he could out of his "beloved" homeland, now appears relatively benign in comparison to some of the men who have arrived since he assumed control at Stamford Bridge in 2003.

Take your pick from this gallery of rogues and ne'er do wells: Manchester City's Thaksin Shinawatra, the disgraced former Thai prime minister still on police bail from his homeland on corruption charges and whose administration was damned at every turn by Amnesty International.

Or how about the Portsmouth owner Alexandre Gaydamak, whose wealth is alleged to stem mainly from his father, Arcadi, a man who was made the subject of an international arrest warrant in 2000 for offences ranging from illegal arms dealing to tax evasion? It says everything about how deeply we have waded into the cesspool that the supporters of a proud club such as Liverpool should be clamouring for a takeover from the investment arm of the Dubai government, criticised in a spate of international reports for its treatment of immigrant workers and its zero-tolerance approach to public protest.

It would be grimly comic timing if DIC's takeover at Anfield coincided with the launch of the state's bid to host the 2020 Olympics, which was mooted last week - a development which relies, of course, on hundreds of downtrodden immigrant workers. The flames of protest which have followed the Olympic torch will keep roaring for some time yet.

"The phrase "political football" has always had a razor-sharp double edge, primarily because there has never been a shortage of shady types willing to exploit football's unrivalled popularity around the globe.