There is a phrase beloved of every business school lecturer, every venture capitalist and every man who has ever worn a gilet to a breakfast meeting: the level playing field.
It is the founding myth of competition itself, the idea that we all start from the same line, breathe the same air and sweat, roughly speaking, the same sweat. And this summer, FIFA has taken that noble concept, marched it into the Philadelphia sunshine and left it there to blister.
Because let us be clear about what is actually happening at this World Cup. On Saturday afternoon, France and Paraguay were sent out to play knockout football in Philadelphia with the heat index nudging an obscene 40C, the sort of temperature at which sensible nations close the shops, draw the shutters and lie down until October. Meanwhile, other teams in this very same tournament have spent a month wafting about in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston, three fully enclosed, climate-controlled pleasure domes where the thermostat sits at a serene 22C, roughly a fifth of all matches are being played in air-conditioned comfort, and the greatest physical hazard is an over-chilled bottle of Gatorade.
That is not a level playing field. That is not even the same sport. That is judging oranges against oranges, yes, but one orange has been kept in the fridge and the other has been left on the dashboard of a Ford Focus in a Texas car park.
And tonight it gets better, or worse, depending on whether you are English. England face Mexico at the Estadio Azteca, a cathedral of footballing suffering that sits 2,240 metres above sea level, where the air is thin, the oxygen is rationed and the home side has been living, training and playing up in the clouds all tournament. Mexico have played three of their four matches at the Azteca. England have had a few days to acclimatise to conditions that physiologists suggest need weeks. It is the sporting equivalent of asking a Surrey accountancy firm to pitch for a contract in Mexico City, in Spanish, while mildly concussed.
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