South Africa is a breath of fresh air in a money-obsessed football world

The World Cup is almost upon us and we are all counting the seconds. And one of the great things is that for the first time in a long time, money isn't at the back of an English football fan's mind.

Supporting your team in the World Cup is all about national pride and while we may criticise the team on the field or the manager's decisions, what we don't have to worry about are wage bills, the owners and the threat of administration.

It may sound rich (excuse the pun) coming from a fan who supports a club where money is no object but by the end of the domestic season I was sick with every other sports news story being about finance, whether it was Portsmouth, Crystal Palace, Chester City or Manchester United and the Red Knights - and I bet fans of those clubs were even more sick. This season I spent more time hearing about financial turmoil than I did about what happened on the pitch, which is, and I think I speak for everyone (apart from Portsmouth fans getting the administrators' autograph), what I watch football for.

Footballers earn too much money. We all know that. In fact, if you heard the very latest figures from Deloittes, clubs spent 67% of their revenue on wages in the 2008/09 season. But it's the trend of sports news stories combined with the trend of high wages that we even know that.

That's why the World Cup is a breath of fresh air. There will be no talk of wages, no worries about administration and no campaigns against the owners or a mysterious consortium. There will just be football. At the highest level. But in its purest form.

And it's fitting that in a year when finance has dominated the football season that the World Cup will take place for the first time in the world's poorest continent. We see people on the television who are so poor that a football fan can't comprehend it let alone a Premier League player, but money doesn't matter to them because they are so excited about the World Cup coming to their home.

The money problem in football isn't going to go away overnight but at least for a month we have so much to enjoy and so much to talk about and wages and finance won't crop up once. Bring on the World Cup!!

JT