In the year before he died, President John F Kennedy addressed the students of Yale University.
‘The great enemy of truth,’ he told them, ‘is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.’
The FA, we now know, feed us both: lies and myths. Lies about players who fail drug tests, myths about the spotlessness of their sport and the individuals within. The guardians of our game have been compromised by commercialism. They are pretend police, handing down sanctions but then conspiring to airbrush those blemishes from the proffered product.