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has just told me it would be preferable if Fabio Capello's replacement as England manager is English.

Bernstein also said he will be fully involved in all the major decisions involving the national side. And so he should, you might say.

Responsibility for the England team is the most high profile role the FA performs and it would be unthinkable for the chairman not to be in control of it.

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Of all the difficult spending cuts announced by the coalition government back in October, Prime Minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne cannot have expected the scrapping of funding for school sports to have sparked such howls of protests.

Tuition fees, sure. Defence cuts, definitely. But a relatively small and little known network called School Sports Partnerships (SSPs)?

That was hardly likely to cause demonstrations, was it?

And yet on Monday Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, will announce a partial climbdown on the decision to axe the £162m scheme.

After a series of meetings with cabinet colleagues last week, including the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, I understand about £70m has been salvaged to ensure the network is maintained, although that too will eventually be phased out.

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might have attracted most of the attention on Friday but his remarks

a bandwagon is already rolling to try and move the competition from its usual place in the football calendar in June and July to January to avoid the scorching heat of summer in the Middle East.

First Fifa executive committee members and ex-players Franz Beckenbauer and Michel Platini floated the idea. Then on Thursday Fifa general secretary

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With a series of big names distancing themselves from the post and the favourite, David Dein, still , the search for a new Football Association chairman is not becoming any clearer.

Sir Keith Mills, Martin Broughton, Lord Mervyn Davies and Sir Terry Leahy have all declined advances to talk to the FA about the position, which has been vacant since in May.

Dein, who until two weeks ago was the international president of , has become the favoured candidate in a narrowing field.

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Even by the Football Association's standards 2010 has been a terrible year.

, humiliation and humiliation as and quit within the space of just two months.

But over the next fortnight has the chance to make amends and set itself on the road to a better 2011.

Before Christmas the FA is due to select a new chairman to replace the now shadow education minister Lord Triesman, who was forced to resign after the Mail on Sunday published his claims about World Cup bid rivals Spain and Russia.

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Roger Burden is seen by many as a principled man. The acting was also seen as the favoured candidate to land the job full time early in the new year.

His decision to because he feels he cannot trust in the wake of is entirely understandable in the circumstances.

His sour views about the Fifa members who will also be shared by many other football leaders and fans in the country.

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The atmosphere was one of anger but also despair and bewilderment. 

As the England 2018 chief executive at the Steigenberger Hotel it was clear he still couldn't quite believe what had happened at Thursday's Fifa World Cup vote.

To lose was one thing. But to be eliminated with only two votes was quite another - especially when one of those votes came from Englishman Geoff Thompson.

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Zurich, Switzerland

It was like a who's who of English football and politics in the Baur Au Lac Hotel on Wednesday night. In one corner of the intimate lobby, where so much of the action is happening, there was David Beckham and Fabio Capello. In another, Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League, chatting with , head of the Asian Football Confederation and Qatar's Fifa vice-president.

Lord Sebastian Coe, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Sports Minister Hugh Robertson were also out in force but the most amusing moment of the evening came when Mayor of London Boris Johnson bounded into the room.

Spotting Chuck Blazer, the American Fifa executive committee member sitting with the actor , Johnson made straight for the key voter, patting him on the arm before proceeding to fist pump his way around the room, urging 'Come on England'.

Just what the Fifa members made of all this is anyone's guess but any doubts over England's commitment to the 2018 World Cup campaign will surely have been swept away.

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