IAN LADYMAN: FIFA's shameless rule-bending for CR7 proves their really want

A little more than six months out from their vainglorious, overblown and increasingly ugly World Cup, FIFA have embarrassed themselves already.

Allowing Cristiano Ronaldo to play in Portugal’s opening game of the tournament is as nakedly self-serving as it gets.

Ronaldo shouldn’t be available for the first two games of next summer’s tournament in the USA, Canada and Mexico. Caught elbowing the Republic of Ireland’s Dara O’Shea during Portugal’s defeat in Dublin earlier this month, the 40-year-old should be serving a three-match ban for violent conduct. He has sat out one game already, missing Portugal’s final qualifier, a 9-1 rout of Armenia last week.

It’s a shame but these are the precedents, the same ones that prompted Thomas Tuchel to take off Jude Bellingham after he had been booked in England’s game in Albania last week. Another yellow and Bellingham would also have been banned for game one next summer.

But this is FIFA’s world, and in FIFA’s world rules are there to be ignored, twisted or broken.

The only rule that really matters is the unwritten but painfully clear one that says the world governing body and their ridiculous president Gianni Infantino can do exactly as they wish, as long as it suits an agenda that has nothing to do with sporting integrity and fairness and everything to do with their own poisonous vanity and lust for money.

And so Ronaldo, who last week hobnobbed with Infantino ally and World Cup host-in-waiting Donald Trump at the White House, will play in games one and two next summer after all. FIFA’s explanation – reported without comment or judgment by established outlets that should know better – is that Ronaldo has taken advantage of a ‘rare ruling’ that takes into account the fact he has never previously been sent off in a world-record 226 appearances for his country.

The phrasing makes it sound as though one of Infantino’s mandarins has found some dusty old rule book down the back of a sofa but that’s not what this is. No, this is simpler than that. This is simply waiving the correct processes to get a star name in front of the cameras next summer from the get-go.

Just as Infantino bent his own rules to get Lionel Messi and Inter Miami in to game one of last summer’s irrelevant and largely ignored Club World Cup, so he has done so here for the other most iconic football name of this generation.

It is not hard to imagine what players such as Moises Caicedo and Nicolas Otamendi make of all this.

Both will miss their countries’ opening games after being sent off when Ecuador and Argentina met each other in qualifying in September. Otamendi is 37 and had not previously been sent off in 128 games for his country. Caicedo, 24, had never received a red card in a six-year career until this one. Both are important players for their country but neither can claim to be of Ronaldo’s status. So he will play and they will not.

Similarly, England did without Wayne Rooney for the start of their Euro 2012 campaign, when he was sent off for kicking out at Montenegro's Miodrag Dzudovic in the final qualifier. The FA successfully appealed for a reduced ban, but Rooney still missed the first two group games.

And this is FIFA’s World Cup. Already expanded to accommodate 48 teams and 16 venues, it will be spread over 39 days and 104 games. The cost to the paying public – not to mention the environment as teams criss-cross America by plane – already stands to be enormous.

England learned this week that their own chances of reaching their first final since 1966 have been increased by FIFA’s decision to seed next Friday’s draw. That one came out of the blue, too.

If they win their group, England will not be able to face fellow top seeds Spain, Argentina or France until the last four. FIFA say this is to ensure ‘competitive balance’. Others see it for what it is: rigging of the draw.

The FA will be delighted. Those who care for such outdated concepts as sporting integrity, jeopardy and fair competition will weep as Infantino and his nodding dogs in suits place another log on the bonfire that continues to consume the game we once loved.

Infantino will stand before us at the opening ceremony in Mexico City on June 11 and no doubt talk about the greatest show on earth and what it represents.

But we know it already. 197 days out from its start, World Cup 2026 is already bent.