In a recent interview, German national team captain Philip Lahm said that "An openly gay footballer would be exposed to abusive elements. For someone who does [come out], it would be very difficult."

Sadly, it is hard to argue with Lahm's conclusion, though it should be noted that there is now an openly gay footballer Anton Hysén, son of former Liverpool player Glenn Hysén (who coaches Anton's fourth division Swedish team, Utsiktens BK).

Once upon a time, FIFA was not corrupt, it was just a Eurocentric empire run for the good of a few countries in western Europe unwilling to open the doors of the World Cup to the rest of the world. Those were the 1960s, when Englishman Stanley Rous' FIFA preferred to pander to the racist South African football association over finding ways to integrate the developing world into its halls of power.

This isn't a post about the World Cup bidding process fix we all knew was in and we are just starting to learn the details about, but a follow-up to Monday's discussion of Fifa's supposedly aggressive initiative to tackle match-fixing around the world.

It's been admitted by Fifa that hundreds of games have been fixed in the past few years.

It sounds like a major investment in the important battle against match fixing in soccer around the world: "FIFA pledged to donate 20 million euros (17.5 million pounds) to Interpol to help fight match-fixing on Monday," Reuters reported, going on to quote Sepp Blatter's sadness and shock at the continuance of match fixing under his gaze:

"It is crucial for us to go together with political authorities, with police authorities to fight those who want to destroy our game," Blatter said.