IT was an earnest old start to the World Cup with Gary Lineker giving us a serious chat talking about homophobia, women’s rights, migrant worker deaths and all the other things they should have been talking about long before an hour before the kick-off in Qatar.

How serious could we really take the monologue however, when it was delivered sitting next to Alan Shearer – who has made little secret of his delight at the transformation of his beloved Newcastle United. Asked about this, he said he was “buzzing” about his team’s success since the Saudi-backed takeover – but also he did care about human rights. How anybody can enjoy the first when you know about the second should be anyone’s guess. He has yet to give us a serious explanation how it’s all ok.

• “THERE’S three minutes left on the clock, John – so that’s 20 minutes still to play.” The “isn’t there a lot of injury time at this World Cup” joke. Happens every game. In fact in one match they were celebrating that there was only five minutes added on. Idiots.

We should be pleased that the referees and other officials are at last cracking down on time-wasting. People pay huge amounts of money to watch football, not to see some left-back ambling up to take a throw-in for three minutes or a winger writhing around in imagined pain. The more injury time the better. Perhaps the one thing the organisers of this tournament have got right.

• WHILE we are distracted by the World Cup, Manchester United have been bundling their soiled laundry through the machine. Cristiano Ronaldo explains in a departing statement that he still loves Manchester United and the fans – that being the club he has now left twice and wholly embarrassed in a Piers Morgan interview last week.

Then the Glazers said they might sell the club. You will often have heard “Glazers Out” when United are losing, but rarely when they are winning or spending huge sums on players. If they leave, they might just have to find another bogeyman to blame.

• FINALLY, a word about Bukayo Saka, your hero and mine. I’ll be honest, I think he should score more of the chances he gets himself at Arsenal but us Gooners have nothing but pride for the young man – still only 21 and how he’s stepped up to become a central figure.

He’s the guy that even people not interested in football come to love. Let’s hope he’s still smiling at the end of the tournament this time.