I LOVE the game of football. It is the people’s game — or at least it once was.

Working-class people used to gather in their tens of thousands every Saturday to watch their favourite team play. In my case, as soon as I was old enough, Aston Villa.

All matches used to begin at 3pm and not long into the evening you could buy the “pink” newspaper with all the results and match reports.

The men’s World Cup that is about to get under way is as far from being the people’s game as it is possible to get.

The game has been completely captured by the money men and turned into something where the wellbeing of either the players or the fans is barely even considered.

I don’t remember any of the events up to, during or around July 30 1966, the day England won the men’s World Cup. I was just a toddler at the time.

But I do have clear memories of the 1970 men’s World Cup. I even remember the song Back Home by the England team as they set out for Mexico to defend their title.

Not because of the song, but this was probably the last time I supported the England men’s team. By that time I was already used to being told that I had no business being in the country and should go back to various places, including the jungle, where I supposedly belonged.

It really is hard to continue to have allegiance to a country where a very determined and loud group of people tell you daily you had no place and were prepared, as they sometimes did, to follow it up with acts of harassment or even violence.

In any case, it was in 1970 that I fell hopelessly in love with football in the shape of the Brazilian team, who eventually went on to win the tournament with unmatched style and panache.

It was the following year that I began to follow Villa after watching a recording of the then third division team, lose a Wembley final to a star-studded Tottenham Hotspur team.

But the days of all teams kicking off on Saturday at 3pm and people feverishly checking the pools afterwards are long gone. So is any semblance of football belonging to the fans.

We are faced this summer with the ridiculous spectacle of the men’s World Cup being played again in Mexico, but this time, in partnership with Canada and the US.

Some 48 teams (up from 38 in previous tournaments) will play 104 matches. Almost the entirety of this tournament will be completely wasted on the population of the US and Canada.

Men’s football just isn’t one of the main sports in the US but this is the second time they have hosted the competition — the first being in 1994.

Canada worships ice hockey. Mexico, to its credit, is football mad.

It is the first time as a host for Canada and the third for Mexico.

The financial outlay necessary for fans to attend games is ridiculous and the kick-off times for games for those unable or unwilling to mortgage their homes to attend are hardly helpful.

Scotland’s first group game against Haiti, for example, begins at 2am (British time) and their games against Morocco and Brazil both kick off at 11pm our time.

These times won’t stop the Scots watching but it’s hardly being done for their convenience.

So, how does a country get to host the men’s World Cup?

The answer is alleged by many to be dependent on how far a football federation (the affiliates of the governing body the Federation Internationale de Football Association, known as Fifa) is prepared to grease the palms of the members of the governing body who vote on such matters.

Allegations of corruption have swirled around Fifa for years.

Some 11 years ago Swiss police officers raided a plush 19th century hotel in Zurich and started arresting delegates who had gathered for an annual congress.

The swoop on May 27 2015, led to more than 40 Fifa officials and associates having to face various fraud charges.

Days later, the then Fifa president Sepp Blatter announced that he was stepping down and then spent years alongside the brilliant former captain of the French men’s team and one of the best players the world has ever seen, Michel Platini, then the president of the European game, defending themselves successfully over charges of forgery and fraud.

But the beneficiary of all of these shenanigans was the person who took over as the new Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, Platini’s former assistant in running the European game.

It was Infantino, and seemingly he alone, who decided to award the “inaugural Fifa Peace Prize” Donald Trump, of all people.

For an organisation that claims to have no involvement in politics, and yet banned participation by Russia as soon as it was humanly possible to do so after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, this was beyond hypocritical.

It was also bizarre to award a peace prize to Trump, who claims credit for stopping wars that he either started or had a hand in.

The stench of things being far from right even extended to the draw for who would play who at the World Cup.

The political leaders of the three host countries each took to the stage to make the draw for who would play who in the competition.

Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, drew the first ball, which he unscrewed to reveal Canada.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was next and she drew Mexico out of the hat!  

Trump was next and, you guessed it, he drew the US.

It really does make you worry about the rest of the draw and that the winner of the tournament has been, shall we say, preordained.

Infantino is also known for attempting to get Palestine’s representative to Fifa to shake hands publicly with the Israeli representative at a time of genocide by the Israelis against the Palestinians including the killing of up to 400 Palesinian footballers.

Not surprisingly, the Palestinian rep refused and walked off the stage.

This is the same Infantino who refused to change the venues of Iran’s games in the US during the tournament.

The result is the US, at the time of writing, insisting that the Iranian players must fly in, play their game and leave the country immediately afterwards.

The Iranian coach has also been denied a visa and so can’t, as I write, even enter the US to work with his team.

Incidentally, there has not been a shred of solidarity from other nations who should refuse to play in the US until Iran was treated equally.

The US has also refused to allow Africa’s top referee, Omar Artan, a Somalian, a nation particularly hated by Trump, into the country. Instead of standing up for Artan, Fifa’s response was to drop him from the competition’s refereeing team.

There are even pictures circulating on social media of black players and officials being humiliated by being searched on the tarmac at airports on their arrival.

This is pure racist US on full view for the world to see and the “big nations” of the competition seemingly couldn’t care less.

None of this represents the spirit of the beautiful game.

There are these and so many other reasons that make it impossible for me to have anything to do with this World Cup.

It’s just not our beautiful game any more and hasn’t been for many years. We need to build an international campaign to win it back.