SOCCER:Three themes returned with force to remind us of their depressing scale – Qatar's World Cup hijack, Neil Lennon's life and the FA Cup, writes MICHAEL WALKER

A WISE man once said we should be wary of constantly seeking to get behind the scenes of everything we believe in. The danger is disillusion; it is the illusion we fell for.

It has been one of those weeks at the end of one of those seasons. Qatar’s World Cup hijack and Neil Lennon’s life, two of the dominant themes, have returned with withering force to remind us of their depressing scale.

Then there is the long decline of the once-cherished FA Cup. Its final was a day that once stood in genuinely splendid isolation, a day that defined a year, a day in childhood when parents could stop and shared an afternoon.

Put these three together and you have a hat-trick even a starving striker might forsake.

Perhaps the FA Cup is the least concern.

It is after all only a football competition. But it was first played for in 1871. That was three years after it is generally accepted the club we know as Stoke City FC were formed.

In all the time since, Stoke have never reached the final. This is not an insignificant club: Stanley Matthews and Gordon Banks could vouch for that. But they have never made it until now, until they thrashed Bolton Wanderers 5-0 in the semi-final. And now they have Manchester City in the final. It is an occasion that on its own could hold the attention for a day easily.

But it is not on its own. Stoke have waited nearly 150 years for this and yet they find themselves made to share their limelight moment.

The FA Cup final is now squeezing itself on to an afternoon podium that could see Manchester United achieve something historic, while Blackburn, Blackpool and Wolves scramble to stay on it at the bottom of the Premier League.

There are some sharp elbows in there and from here it seems impossible to see how the FA Cup final can evade them all.

The best outcome for the Cup – in the other games – would be that Blackburn defeat United at Ewood Park and thus take the Premier League title to its last day, tomorrow week.

Blackburn have taken four points from the last six, which is just as well since they took four points from the previous 30, but it is still doubtful whether they can deny United the point that will give the Old Trafford club a 19th record-breaking league championship title.

Blackburn’s game kicks off at 12.45pm, by which time in a different era most folk would have gathered themselves for the tingle of the FA Cup build-up. Alex Ferguson might have been among them.

But if United take a point at Ewood, Ferguson won’t be rushing to his nearest TV set to take in Stoke-Manchester City, he’ll be on the pitch in Lancashire doing that auntie’s jig of his. It will be around 20 minutes before kick-off at Wembley and he will have earned the right to celebrate how he wishes.

Yet deep within Ferguson there will be a traditionalist’s response as well. Even a man of such one-eyed United-ness will surely still be alive to news from elsewhere, and should Manchester City win at Wembley, this day will be historic for another Mancunian reason. Ferguson may then think he knows what it feels like to be the FA Cup.

It is one of the other disillusioning features of this week that United’s potential history-making will not bask in the isolation it deserves either. And that would be some perverse achievement.

There is too much going on and yesterday we were informed that, because of the European Championships, it will be the same next year.

What are the authorities trying to do to the FA Cup? The trouble is that the Cup, like the World Cup, has ceased to be about pure football. The Premier League, and Sky Television, do not “own” the FA Cup. Therefore, although there has been no public declaration, they are at odds with the FA Cup.

It is not difficult to imagine a future scenario whereby Sky bid for and win the rights to the FA Cup and then say – sorry, shout – how much they value its tradition and how they will never allow it to be compromised by the Premier League again, Sky still holding those rights too of course.

Then, as in the old days, we would get a seven-hour build-up to a 3pm kick-off – or a 12-hour build-up to a 7.45pm kick-off. Premier League games would all be on Sunday, or have finished a week earlier.

Sky could easily make a feasible case to “save” the FA Cup. Thus another part of the game becomes another part of a different game, one in which football matters more because of its economic and emotional power than the football itself.

This is what has happened with Fifa and Qatar. Due to good journalism rather than internal checks or investigations we are being shown a world of alleged corruption we suspected existed but which we needed proof of. This is one where the game is sold for personal gain. Sometimes a country might also benefit from voting deals but the candidate from that country is unlikely to downplay his role in that.

There is a vague threat that the Football Association could withdraw from Fifa and how great it would be if a country like Germany made the same point.

It would be mildly acceptable by some standards if Neil Lennon was experiencing merely vague threats.

But the situation is well past that: we have reached a stage where Walter Smith, a major Scottish football figure, has expressed his delight and relief that he will never be part of the Old Firm again.

Smith’s view was made a fortnight before Wednesday’s scandalous scenes at Tynecastle – why were there no police or stewards on the side of the Celtic dugout from which the potentially murderous intruder came?

Lennon survived but what does it say that we are using terms such as survival about something other than the avoidance of relegation? Thankfully there is only tomorrow’s Helicopter Sunday and the Scottish Cup final left of this dreadful season.

Lennon will then have to consider his position but a legitimate fear is he is approaching the Belfast Celtic territory of 1949.

Walk away while you can.

Belfast Celtic’s story is a reminder that sectarianism did not begin and end with the latest Troubles. It is a reminder of the illusion that everything is more or less all right.