SO WHAT does Singapore get for spending more than $150 million on the first Youth Olympic Games? A slap from Fifa.
The world body has made pity the qualifying criteria for the YOG's football tournament.
The event will host just 12 teams — six girls and six boys, making it even less of a spectacle than the tune-up Asian Youth Games, which had 14.
Now Fifa ruled that only nations that "have never, or rarely, had the opportunity to participate in Olympic Games or World Cups" will get to play.
So the Singapore audience will be asked to fill stadiums for the chance to watch Under-15 teams from places like Vanuatu, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea and Papua New Guinea (the first is in Africa, the other Oceania) play in what a colleague has labelled the Bleeding Heart Games.
The question is whether YOG organisers, FAS and the International Olympic Committee will stand for this. Since when did teams qualify for a major games because of how bad they are?
There probably are negotiations going on behind the scenes. Just check the YOG website.
Each of the other 25 sports have their qualification system set down. For football, it's TBD (to be determined), even though Fifa's selection process was made public a month ago.
One post in another forum has thoughtfully pointed out that the YOG may be a pawn in a bigger battle between Fifa and the IOC.
Fifa will do everything to make sure nothing takes away from the lustre of the cash cow that is the World Cup, from which it gets 95 per cent of its revenue, and even their Under-20 and Under-17 tournaments.
Which is why it wants to change the Olympics contest from an under-23 to under-21 format, and throw out the rule that allows teams to field three overaged players, ie. more established stars.
The IOC does not want its tournament to become irrelevant. So president Jacques Rogge has warned that any fiddling may end up with football being thrown out of the London 2012 Games.
Reducing the YOG to a tournament of minnows may have been Fifa's way of hitting back.
Depending on how this saga ends, it will cost at least a few broken hearts.
Consider Vanuatu.
For those who have not Wikied this yet, this is a young country that found independence in 1980, that is made up of 82 volcanic islands some 7,400km to the southeast of Singapore, with a population of 215,000 who speak Bislama, sing Yumi, Yumi, Yumi (their national anthem) and harvest the mild narcotic Kava, which when consumed, produces euphoria.
Their men's football team is ranked 141 out of 203 in the world, higher than Malaysia, but lower than Singapore.
The Oceania Football Confederation has already been trumpeting Vanuatu's selection to the YOG, claiming it will "thrive on the opportunity to test themselves against the world's best".
Best is not the right word, but the kids must have been elated when told about the Singapore trip, a chance to prove that they do deserve a place at the first YOG.
So what happens if Fifa is persuaded to change their minds? Who's going to tell these boys from Vanuatu, from Cuba, from Zimbabwe, these girls from Iran, from Trinidad, from Chile that their invitations have been cancelled?
What do you think YOG officials should do?