Money talks as exhausted stars line up for FIFA's vanity project

SIR Alex Ferguson, British football's greatest club manager, once told me that he liked his players to have a good holiday break once the season was over.

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That conversation followed the news that his player David Beckham was instead on a lucrative commercial trip to the Far East.

This week, Beckham has joined his Manchester United manager in having been made a knight in the King’s Birthday Honours.

Beckham's US soccer team Inter Miami is in Group A in the 32-club so-called Club World Cup currently underway in the USA.

They opened the new tourna-ment on Saturday night with a 0-0 draw with Egypt's Al Ahly in Miami's Hard Rock Stadium. The Cairo-based team missed a penalty.

The difference between Sir Alex's day and Sir David's ownership is even more MONEY.

Never mind about players’ welfare (they are fit but not machines) with too many matches in an already packed calendar. Look at the loot on offer for this new tournament.

The equivalent of £775 million on the table - £20m each for the ten European teams just for taking part.

There are 32 teams competing from Brazil, Egypt, USA, New Zealand, Argentina, Japan, Mexico and so on... including, of course, Saudi Arabia.

To start with, there are eight groups of four teams - £1.54 million for a group stage win and £800,000 for a draw.

Group of 16 qualifiers will get almost £6 million and so it goes on until £30 million for winning the final on July 13. It all began on Saturday night.

As a pre-season tournament, you could argue it is much better than warm-up friendlies and tours.

But this time of the year, it is plain stupid and greedy. Anyway, Manchester City (for once in recent years without a trophy) and Chelsea were not exactly the best two teams in England last season.