Fans need the FA to speak up and take on Fifa's rip-off

With ticket prices for next summer's World Cup five times higher than in 2022, governing bodies must show that the game doesn't accept this 'betrayal'

- Miguel Delaney

Astronomical World Cup ticket prices might have been a huge issue for English fans this week, but you wouldn't have guessed that from the Football Association board meeting. Sources say they weren't even discussed.

The guidance in one weekly missive instead just stated: "Fifa set the prices, we aren't involved, we don't get to approve them, and we only received them just prior to the announcement. We are aware that many of our fans and fan groups are unhappy with the pricing, and have asked us to relay their concerns to Fifa. We will do that." To which an obvious response is, what about the FA's own concerns? What about its anger about this? What about the fact it had ample warning about these prices for months? Where's the lobbying? These are just pre-sales. There is time for pressure to work and Fifa to reverse this.

Sources within the Football Supporters' Association [FSA] are already unnerved by the lack of public statement, and have warned the FA that "silence isn't an option".

The English body is hardly alone in this, even if it does hold a unique power as one of the biggest federations in the world, with all the symbolic historic weight as the federation that set the sport's rules.

Many national associations privately declared themselves "shocked" by the prices on Thursday, but that hasn't yet translated into any action. The German federation, the DFB, was also embarrassingly meek as it spoke of how it "would have preferred more affordable tickets".

Stirring stuff from the federation that represents the most mobilised fans in the world.