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Last updated at 1:17 AM on 21st February 2011

That’s the problem with freedom. First one group of little brown people want it, then a whole damn region of little brown people want it, and the next thing you know there is one less place for rich white guys to race cars.

With bodies piling up in Libya and protesters assaulted by tear gas and rubber bullets in Bahrain, the struggle for freedom in the east is no frivolous matter. As for how it affects Bernie Ecclestone and the first grand prix of the Formula One season, however, this should not prevent us laughing like drains.

The tin-pot dictators of these sporting fiefdoms take their events to countries run by regimes that mirror their own authoritarianism and may now be derailed by the local desire for self-determination. Just beautiful, isn’t it? Maybe God is setting his alarm clock after all.

Oh, please, Qatar next. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wouldn’t it be the happiest day if freedom rang the length and breadth of North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf states and we found out how the people really felt about living under systems of rule that border on medievalism?

Dodgy business: Ecclestone's deal with Bahrain is looking a major mistake

No need to rush, of course. There are 10 years for the penny to drop in Qatar’s capital, Doha. In fact, give it a while and land that freedom clusterbomb right on FIFA’s toes, if only to see Sepp Blatter’s face when it happens.

Maybe save it until he is perched on the throne-like seat he occupied at the opening ceremony of the Asian Cup. We want something we can treasure on YouTube, like when he fell down a big hole onstage while glad-handing some executive suits.

As for Ecclestone, watching him wrestle with the concept of the freedom movement in Bahrain has been a delight. First he declared it all quiet, then he hoped it would blow over, as if the encampment on the Pearl Roundabout was no more than a few concerned villagers campaigning about the by-pass near Chideock.

This was the bloke who intimated that Jenson Button was targeted by carjackers in Brazil because he was a bit dim.

‘We have never been involved in religion and politics,’ said Ecclestone, hoping to tip-toe away from this pile-up by perpetrating one of the great lies in modern sport.

Ecclestone is dissembling. Politics and religion are very much part of every deal these days, particularly if there is money and an emerging market involved. Ecclestone says he will leave the final call in Bahrain up to a bloke called the Crown Prince: there’s the clue.

Send the Olympics to China and you are involved in politics, because China is a totalitarian regime that will build venues and put on a show using its power to subjugate local dissent.

There were official protest zones at the Beijing Games but the 77 requests to use them were denied, and those who objected were sent for re-education through labour.

South Africa altered its constitution to accommodate FIFA’s demands during the 2010 World Cup. As for religion, that is increasingly in play as sport embraces wealthy regimes that have singular attitudes to alcohol, homosexuals and Jews.

Snapshot: A Bahraini anti-government protester looks at a banner at the Pearl roundabout

Ecclestone knew what he was getting when he took F1 to Bahrain. He was in bed with a repressive regime that would pay ?24.6million to host the first grand prix of the 2010 season and raise the offer by 50 per cent to retain the right this year. That is in addition to the ?92m it cost to construct the circuit. Bahrain has capital and, until recently, did not have an opposition with a voice asking awkward questions about democracy.

Ecclestone finds democracy inconvenient and, when he spouts his rubbish, many smile and judge him indulgently as a maverick. Yet the new frontiers F1 has opened up suggest his aversion is genuine.

Sport conspires with rulers from a different age, despots, theologians and hereditary Crown Princes. Administrators want to make modern millions, while exploiting systems of government from the Dark Ages, because that is also how they rule.

Yet it would follow that if Egypt can get rid of Mubarak, Libya can topple Gaddafi and Bahrain can overthrow the house of Khalifa, we can also do something about sport’s self-appointed little emperors.

See you in the square, or on the roundabout.

Among those in the Parliamentary Select Committee currently sitting in judgment on football is Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East.

Watson is a career politician who moved through student activism to safe union and party jobs, with the briefest spell in marketing and advertising.

This may be where he learned the delightful tactics that helped produce a leaflet entitled ‘Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers’ when he was campaign organiser at the Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election in 2004.

Another leaflet argued that if the Lib Dems won, 16-year-olds would be allowed to appear in hardcore porn, guns would be easier to buy and cocaine would be sold over the counter in local shops.

All Labour literature was branded by a cross of St George, this being a constituency with a significant Asian population and a disaffected white working class community.

Just so you know the calibre of the men calling the shots here. Brian Mawhinney, Lord of Governance, is up this week.

Maybe Watson could ask him about those silent rules that were in place during his time as chairman of the Football League.

Although, according to his voting patterns, as a strong opponent of transparency in Parliament, Watson probably agrees with them.

Birmingham City and Stoke City were through to the quarter-final on Saturday, but a day later Manchester City and Notts County were still to resolve a tie from the round of 32. Everything that is wrong with the FA Cup was encapsulated in the chaos of the weekend fixture programme.

Was it a fourth round replay or a fifth round match? Who knew? There were so many ‘ors’ in the sixth round draw it should have come live from a Viking longboat.

By the time television and replays were taken into account, just two fifth round fixtures started at three o’clock on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the dullards at the FA debate further vandalism such as seeding or regionalising the draw.

Round robin: Manchester City's Patrick Vieira scores the opening goal against Notts County

What is slowly killing the Cup — apart from the dead hand of Julian Eccles, group director of marketing and communications, and his unwieldy consultation process — is the erosion of tradition.

The final should always be the showpiece end to the season, yet this year it will be played on the penultimate weekend of Premier League games, to accommodate the Champions League final.

Getting to Wembley, the age-old ambition of any footballer or supporter, can now mean reaching the semi-final as the FA wrings every last penny from the national stadium.

The saving grace is that the competition is woven into our DNA. The luck of the draw is an idiom that was initially applied to the choosing of straws or the dealing of cards, yet in its modern usage conjures thoughts of the random pairing of FA Cup teams.

Yet one of the reforms under consideration is the abandonment of the free draw: as vital to FA Cup survival as the trophy at the end of it.

The FA’s sponsorship deal with E.ON is up in May and no new backer has been agreed. Is it any wonder? Who knows what the next benefactors will be getting? Replays? Evening kick-off times? Midweek matches only? Seeding? Regionalisation?

Eccles and his cohorts have elected to undergo a process that leaves the whole format of the competition up in the air with an annual income of ?9million at stake.

Of course, it could be worse. Maybe the FA are so bereft of clear thought and so desperate for cash, with ?342m still to be paid off the Wembley site according to the last published accounts, that the new sponsors will end up calling the shots instead.

The FA Cup, no longer brought to you by E.ON, but devised for you by Big Bill’s Used Tyre Warehouse, because he came up with the dough.

Some ask why this column is contemptuous of UEFA president Michel Platini, and now you have the answer: he makes it so easy.

This is a man who pontificates on financial fair play and his wish to make the Champions League final accessible for children, before setting ticket prices at ?176 to ?326 with a grasping detachment that would shame the humanity of a Bond villain.

UEFA were in court last week trying to place tournaments such as the World Cup and European Championship behind a satellite pay wall. Anyone who hasn’t seen through Platini by now really isn’t paying attention.

Sunderland have posted annual losses of ?26m, with a wage bill of ?53.9m — 82 per cent of turnover — and gate receipts down ?1.3m on 2009.

The club are deemed a going concern only because of the support of the parent company, owned by Ellis Short.

Perhaps Darren Bent’s ?24m transfer to Aston Villa was not such a bad thing after all.

Harry Redknapp, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, was hardly the most popular man in the San Siro when he announced the Premier League superior to Serie A. ‘I can see you don’t like it,’ he told the local reporter who
requested the comparison, ‘and I’m not saying Tottenham are a better side than AC Milan.’

Why not? They are.

Tottenham would win the Italian league, playing better football, too. Italian domestic football is dull, and slow. That was AC Milan’s problem last week, for all the gifted players in the team, they had no collective turn of pace, no way of upping the tempo.

Two easy: Redknapp dictates matters at the San Siro

Witness how Tottenham played the second half away to Inter Milan, or the whole of the return at White Hart Lane; how they started the AC Milan tie or the energy of the counter-attack that won the game when fatigue should have been setting in.

Peter Crouch looked dead on his feet but found that last reserve of strength to keep up with Aaron Lennon and score.

That is what is missing from Italian football. Their managers put such great emphasis on fitness, but the pace of the football is so plodding, it barely matters. This is why Premier League teams win.

In the days when Real Madrid were the force in Spanish football, the king and prime minister often supported them from the royal box.

Policy revision: Brailsford

Unsurprisingly, many thought it was difficult for the away team to get a decision at the Bernabeu.

The same might be said of another Spanish obsession — cycling. When the Real Federacion Espanola de Ciclismo first mooted a one-year ban for three-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, who tested positive for clenbuterol, there was an angry public reaction, culminating in a statement from prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero that the cyclist had no case to answer.

Last week, surprise, surprise, the RFEC agreed, by clearing him.

Meanwhile, Dave Brailsford, the general manager of Team Sky, says he will be revising a zero tolerance policy on drug cheats because it made it too hard to find backroom staff.

‘When you’re trying to lift performance, you have to go back a long way to find people who haven’t been tainted by many of cycling’s past problems,’ Brailsford said.

Although you can’t say the RFEC, not to mention the Spanish government, aren’t doing their bit to change that.

And now the squealing starts.

‘The result is so unfair,’ said Xavi after Barcelona’s defeat at Arsenal, while cheerleaders in parts of the Spanish press blamed poor refereeing and an absence of luck.

Last year, the anti-football of Inter Milan was responsible, yet there is little mention of the extraordinary good fortune that took Barcelona past Chelsea, and to their only Champions League final of the Pep Guardiola era, in 2009.

They are a great side, though, have no doubt of that and it is their misfortune to play in a time when the demands of the tournament are such that no team have retained the trophy in its current format.

Tough luck: Barcelona skipper Xavi (right) reflects on defeat at the Emirates

Were this the European Cup of the Sixties and Seventies in which the champions were crowned after nine games — if that, some of Real Madrid’s early triumphs necessitated as few as seven appearances — then Barcelona might have dominated, particularly as the early rounds were often a glorified bye.

Real Madrid, Benfica, Inter Milan, Ajax, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest all kept the trophy.

Barcelona will not have been as good as every one of those sides, but they would be better than a few. That they have a greater hill to climb is unfortunate, but it is not unfair, because the competition is better for it.

Millwall supporters came close to forcing the abandonment of Saturday’s match against Middlesbrough, after bombarding the pitch with missiles.

Chris Sarginson, the referee, asked the managers if they wanted the game to continue. They did, and Middlesbrough won 3-2.

‘From our fans’ point of view, there was some fantastic passion and perhaps they felt aggrieved at one or two decisions which didn’t go their way,’ said Millwall manager Kenny Jackett.

‘I do like passion and enthusiasm and some of the decisions we have had recently have been tough. But I’m not condoning it.’

Oh yes he is. Fantastic passion and enthusiasm is not throwing objects on the pitch, and whingeing about the referee is never justification for hooligan behaviour. More than condoning it, in future games, Jackett has as good as guaranteed it.

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