Back in the seventies a few of us were chatting to the late boxing promoter Harry Levene about his recent holiday in South Africa, a country then still in the vicious stranglehold of apartheid.

"How was it, Harry?" we enquired.

"Wonderful," he enthused. "Fantastic country. Lovely weather, great food, superb wines, marvellous lifestyle. Do you know, when you fly into Johannesburg you look down and see that every home has a swimming pool. Honest, I don't know what them blacks have got to complain about."

Fast forward to 2014  and we discover that such pitiful dinosaurs are far from extinct.

Dave Whelan, the chairman of football club Wigan Athletic, has had to apologise for making equally outlandish comments about Jewish people, among other crass observations, while remaining adamantly unapologetic about hiring as the Championship side's new manager Malky Mackay, currently under investigation by the Football Association for sending a series of outrageous tweets that were not only racist, but disgracefully sexist and homophobic.

A sample of the axed Cardiff boss's charmless musings includes the following:

On South Korean footballers:" *** chinkys. There's enough dogs in Cardiff for us all to go round."

On the football agent Phil Smith: "Go on fat Phil. Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers."

On a football official:" He's a snake...a gay snake. Not to be trusted."

And of a female agent Mackay tweeted to a football crony: "I hope she's looking after your needs. I bet you'd love to bounce on her falsies." What a wag!

And surely to cap it all  there's the distribution of a picture of a game called "Black Monopoly" with every square marked:"Go to jail."

Malky Mackay was appointed manager of Wigan Athletic, despite the FA's investigation into the homophobic, sexist and racist text messages he allegedly sent while at Cardiff City 
©Getty Images



Whelan's attempts to justify recruiting Mackay included the suggestion: "It is telling the truth. Do you think Jewish people chase money a little bit more more than we do? Jewish people love money. Everyone loves money." And: "If any Englishman said he has never called a Chinaman a chink he is lying."

And naturally Whelan informs us that some of his best friends are Jewish. He has "hundreds of them." Probably Chinese, too. And as for blacks, well, as he points out, he often goes to Barbados on holiday.

We recall that the 78-year-old multi-millionaire boss of a sports goods empire has some previous in this respect.

Two years ago he said he couldn't understand why there was so much fuss over John Terry's alleged racist jibe to Anton Ferdinand during Chelsea's game against Queen's Park Rangers.

The FA's decision to charge Terry was "barmy" he insisted as the player had been cleared by a  court of law. In any case, he added, black players have just got to get on with it. "If you were to actually play football and go out on that field and listen to how many players fall out with each other, insult each other. It's colossal. At the end of the game, you shake hands and it's all done."

Dave Whelan is now facing huge criticism for signing Malky Mackay as manager of Wigan Athletics and the comments used to defend the signing of the controversial figure
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What Mackay has done, says Whelan now, "is so tiny in reality...it's not all that serious when you read it. I don't see that there's anything for the FA to investigate."

Well maybe the FA, who say they are now also investigating Whelan's own comments, will think otherwise. Or maybe not. For football's authorities are compromised, embarrassingly stuck over a barrel of self-protection.

The reason is that Mackay's odious missives were sent privately to a friend, though later made public by his former chairman at Cardiff City, Vincent Tan, a Chinese-Malaysian. And earlier this year one of the game's own head honchos, no less a personage than Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, was similarly looked into after sending sending blatant sexist emails, for which he was to fulsomely apologise, but no action was taken against him because they, too, were deemed "private". Simply laddish banter between chums, as Mackay claims his were. So that's all right then?

As was Sheffield United's initial reluctance to reject a request from one of their former star players, convicted rapist Ched Evans, to resume his playing career with the club after serving half his sentence.

Public opinion, led by Sheffield's Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, who said she wanted her name removed from stand named after her if Evans was re-signed, forced the club's eventual U-turn.

So Evans needs to seek employment elsewhere. Who might sign him? Maybe a text to Messrs Whelan and Mackay at Wigan Athletic would receive a sympathetic response.

Sheffield United were forced to go back on their decision to resign convicted rapist Ched Evans after he served half his prison sentence, due to public outcry and a threat by Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill ©Getty Images



On top of this domestic rubbish heap a continued avalanche of sleaze continues to engulf the game's toxic international governing body, FIFA, the latest debacle its blatant distortion of the summary of the report of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process.

There is now little doubt that corruption within FIFA is endemic and possibly incurable.

FIFA may be the wealthiest sports governing body but it is ethically bankrupt.

The Beautiful Game it supposedly represents has become an ugly monster, irrevocably scarred by greed and corruption.

Football's problem is one of leadership. There is none, leaving it to wander aimlessly in a moral maze.

There is a desperate need for a change of direction yet how can this happen under current President Sepp Blatter, who to the dismay of most European nations is to stand for re-election  for a fifth term next year?

At least Blatter, not noted for his Anglophilic tendencies, must be less than enamoured to learn that a man with a distinctly English-sounding name could oppose him.

Harold Mayne-Nicholls has said he is seriously considering opposing Sepp Blatter in the latest Presidential campaign ©Getty Images



Harold Mayne-Nicholls does rather sound like one of those Foreign Office johnnies and in fact he is a former diplomat, though a Chilean of English-Croatian descent.

To add to the beleaguered Blatter's angst, Mayne-Nicholls, 53, once in charge of the Chilean FA, also works as a journalist and was the FIFA technical official whose warnings about Qatar's suitability to host a summer World Cup were ignored by its Executive Committee. He led the technical commission which assessed each bid for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments.

Now he confirms he is seriously considering standing against the wily Swiss glad-hander. He says: "I wrote a column a few months ago for El Pais in Spain in which I point out the need for fresh air. What has happened lately has not served the image of FIFA or, indirectly, football. There is a complete disconnect between what the fans think is needed and the administration of the game. That leads me to believe that you can both accomplish change while maintaining what works well. I do not think it is wise, in the long term, to maintain both the same individuals and structures."

Blatter, who as insidethegames revealed last week, must forsake his seat on the International Olympic Committee when he reaches his 80th birthday in March 2016 - a rule which he angrily describes as "an act of discrimination" - faces a possible three-pronged fight for the Presidency he has held since 1999.

Another former top FIFA official, Frenchman Jérôme Champagne, has already declared his candidature.

So is the Blatter bubble finally about to burst?

Sadly, as unlikely as Malky Mackay becoming the next manager of the Chinese national women's team or Dave Whelan taking out a subscription to the Jewish Chronicle.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.