After a long, drawn out, ultimately boring build up England’s hopes of hosting the 2018 World Cup were dashed when Sepp Blatter announced that Russia had won the race.

English hearts sank well before Blatter opened the envelope, however, as Twitter made the presentation a mockery by breaking the news some 10 minutes before – albeit in an ‘unconfirmed’ manner.

Prince William was reported as looking glum while Roman Abramovich smiled knowingly, Sky Sports News got a hammering for all their coverage by any journalist you care to name – despite the fact those same journalists were doing the same thing via a different medium, the English media blamed the English media for England’s failure and many, many off the cuff jokes were Tweeted.

This is the second time Twitter has effectively ruined a supposedly massive announcement in football. The last time was Capello’s squad for the World Cup in South Africa. The world is too fast for long winded presentations. As some wag put it on Twitter (of course), they might as well do what they do at school and post it up on the canteen noticeboard.

The 2022 World Cup went to Qatar, by the way, but nobody seemed to care about that. They will when they realise it is a punishable offence to drink alcohol or be drunk in public…

On a personal note, I’m gutted England lost, I do feel we had the best bid and are best equipped to host the event. We’re not great at politics, though, and no matter what anyone says, the Panorama investigation into Fifa won’t have helped. At least it went to Russia, though, as they should benefit from it more than Spain and Portugal or Holland and Belgium would have.

There’s the small matter of 2014 to come yet anyway. Roll on, Brazil.

I’ll leave you with this thought from @CanadianMike101:

“Brazil will host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Russia will host the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 World Cup. Unfair?”