VIA our television screens over the next few weeks, we will witness how Korea and Japan have managed to build some of the finest sporting stadia in the world.

These two nations, outposts of international football, have demonstrated what commitment and organisation can achieve.

In stark contrast, let us witness what has happened at Wembley. England, the birthplace of football, has demonstrated what incompetence and disorder can bring.

Incompetence has made our nation a laughing stock in the sporting world, cost us any chance of hosting the World Cup in the foreseeable future and brought about the humiliation of having the 2005 World Athletics Championships snatched from our grasp.

It is almost two years since Wembley staged its last football match and £120m of National Lottery money was handed over to help finance the construction of a new national stadium.

Today, the old stadium remains intact, with no sign of demolition workers moving in, and no end in sight of the long-running farce which has prevented plans for a new stadium being agreed.

Thus far in this sorry saga, the Football Association and the Government have not covered themselves in glory.

Yesterday, we learned that, for some inexplicable reason, the FA signed an agreement in 1999 that, if the new stadium plan collapses, the old stadium will be re-opened and will stage the FA Cup until at least 2019.

Essentially, that agreement means the new national stadium is built at Wembley, or it is not built at all.

And yet the FA and the Government have encouraged Birmingham's project to build the stadium, even going so far as naming the city "preferred second bidder".

Tainted by such deceit and incompetence, it is difficult to justify entrusting this Government and the FA to deliver a new national stadium within an agreed timescale and within an agreed budget.

And, having managed perfectly well without a national football stadium for almost two years, we have to ask whether the huge expense can be justified without a World Cup on the horizon.