So the FIFA Fair Play prize for 1998 has been awarded jointly to the national associations of Iran, the USA and Northern Ireland. The FIFA Fair Play prize for France '98 was jointly won by England and France, and both awards will be handed over at a gala evening in Barcelona on February 1st.

Intriguingly, FIFA president Sepp Blatter (left) has said the joint award was proof of football's role as a mediating force, an area where the president himself has recently experienced major difficulties.

His pronouncement that the World Cup should be held every two years couldn't have been more inflammatory if he'd wanted it to be. Simultaneously upsetting UEFA, the IAAF, the IOC and countless other smaller sports organisations, who specifically hold their events so they do not clash with the football World Cup, Blatter would do well to digest some of his own advice on mediating and stop behaving like the English Rugby Union.