When Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, sat down with his opposite number at the International Hockey Federation, Leandro Negre, he could have asked about all sorts of good rules that football could steal from hockey.
He could have discussed self-pass legislation, meaning that after a foul is committed the attacking team has the right to restart by dribbling with the ball rather than knocking it to a team-mate. It makes the game quicker, and cuts out dissent.
He could have discussed the green, yellow and red card system that hockey employs, which allows referees greater freedom to distinguish between offences, or the way the sin bin is used to take the heat out of confrontations.
He could have considered the fact the clock is on display in hockey and linked to the referee, therefore avoiding the usual tear-up over additional time with Sir Alex Ferguson.
Blatter discussed none of these. Instead, he took the one rule change in hockey that would absolutely destroy football and asked about that. "He had a lot of questions about how successful it was to abandon offside," said Negre. "He seemed very interested in how we had implemented this."
It is remarkable how often this happens in football. An administrator passes over any number of perfectly reasonable and promising plans until he alights on the one that is least suitable, and adopts it. Take Portsmouth, managed by Avram Grant. There are a great many perfectly practical ways to keep his club afloat enabling it to complete its fixture commitments this season and all, so far, have been ignored. The most unsuitable, the most variable, the one that opens a fresh can of worms is the one that has remained longest under negotiation.
Andrew Andronikou, the administrator now handling Portsmouth's affairs, has been in talks with the Premier League all week in an attempt to obtain dispensation to sell players outside the transfer window. This has overtaken the idea of advancing next season's parachute payments to Portsmouth as the best way of solving their financial crisis and keeping the club from liquidation.
Yet parachute payments are finite income that the club, and the Premier League, can guarantee will be arriving later this year. The league would merely advance the money enabling Portsmouth to pay the taxman and maintain their fixture schedule. By contrast, the ability to sell players is prey to random forces. Suppose there is little interest in the Portsmouth squad? It is hardly a sellers market. Clubs will be trying to force down the fee, knowing the circumstances of the sale, until the price is barely worth taking. West Ham United, in dire financial straits, sold Michael Carrick to Tottenham Hotspur for £2.5m; a year later he went to Manchester United for £16m.
Even if the Premier League ring-fenced the money Portsmouth owed to clubs to make sure outstanding football debt was also settled as well HMRC satisfied, the parachute payment plan remains the best way out. Now in administration, with a nine point deduction pending, Portsmouth are already relegated in all but mathematical terms. The most pressing concern is that the fixtures are completed and the league table unmolested (it would have to be adjusted if Portsmouth went into liquidation). Why look for plan B when plan A is already a winner?