The Fiver | The one in which Nasty Leeds get officially rebranded by Fifa

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A lot of hard slaps were dished out at La Scala in Milan on Monday night. But that makes it sound like some dreadful, unseemly rumble in which a lot of right-handers were thrown, when in actuality it was a most refined affair. You see, there was a lot of backslapping going on. An awful lot. Close your eyes, and you could be forgiven for assuming the ghosts of Buddy Rich, Jaki Liebezeit and Keith Moon had turned up to record a cover version of Antmusic. Or that a load of pundits, presenters and journalists had just logged on to Social Media Disgrace Twitter for their nightly org1astic conflab. Ow! Give it a rest, will you, The Fiver’s developing tinnitus over here. But no. It was actual backslapping, good old hearty hard backslapping, at a Fifa awards ceremony that has nothing to do with the Ballon d’Or, or maybe it once did, we can’t keep up to tell the truth.

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