For all of Cristiano Ronaldo's mmanconey-grabbing antics over the past few days, the Portuguese's possession by the green-eyed monster pales into insignificance against the latest money-sucking behaviour demonstrated by football's apparent guardians, FIFA and UEFA.

The background of the story is thus. By law, each nation state is permitted to submit a list of sporting events to the European Commission which are then deemed "protected". After the commission has given approval, all these sporting events are then secured as free-to-air for the broadcasters in the respective countries as applicable.

In the UK, both the World Cup and European Championship are always protected as free-to-air events by this process. The UK government argue that these two pinnacle occasions are so integral to the fabric of British society that they must be available to all on terrestrial TV (namely the BBC1 and ITV1).

‘The fact the FIFA and UEFA are gold-digging is no big surprise. What causes the blood to boil is the rank hypocrisy the governing bodies are unashamedly putting on public view’

You would have thought that the sport's governing bodies would applaud this practice. It spreads the reach of the greatest showpieces of the international game to all. So what do FIFA and UEFA have to say about it? That this practice "infringes the applicant's property rights, as it results in a restriction of the way in which the applicant may market the television rights … [and] leads to a disproportionate and unjustified distortion of competition on the relevant market".

In other words: Who cares about football’s responsibility to be available to the poorest people in society, it’s all about money.

Euro 2008 has given FIFA and UEFA an opportunity to feel they have justification in their argument. A UEFA legal representative, Alasdair Bell, said, "It is extremely difficult to justify the assertion that every one of the 31 games in the European Championship are of major importance to UK society.” As a result, football fails to maximise its commercial profits by being denied the opportunity to milk the lucrative and rich UK market.