Sometimes you wonder if the same people who look after boxing, with its alphabet soup of world titles and dwindling fan base, are also charged with marketing competitive youth football. In theory, it should not be that difficult.

Young footballers, generally untainted by the perceived cynicism of the top-flight game, are, on the main, driven and appealing. And football fans around the world love to talk about who the “next big thing” is going to be. You would think that it is a winning combination. And yet competitions such as the Under-20 World Cup, which kicked off in Egypt last week, create barely a ripple of interest. There are two, interlinked reasons: timing and personnel.

Fifa moves this competition around the calendar seemingly at random. Of the past five Under-20 World Cups, two were played in summer, one in spring, one in winter and now, this one, in autumn. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with television or event planning will tell you that consistency is paramount in scheduling. In this case, playing in September has had an unfortunate, but predictable, effect: the most-promising players stayed home.

Out of England’s 21-man squad, 12 players have yet to start a league game at any level and Sam Baldock, of Milton Keynes Dons, is the only one to have held down a regular place last season. Theoretically, England could have sent a team including players such as James Tomkins, Kieran Gibbs and Jack Rodwell. Instead, they stayed home, as did the cream of Germany (Thomas Müller, Marko Marin, Holger Badstuber) and Italy (Davide Santon, Mario Balotelli, Federico Macheda, Alberto Paloschi).

It is a slightly different story with Argentina and Brazil, as well as Spain (who sent Sergio Asenjo, the first-choice goalkeeper at Atlético Madrid). But there is no escaping the fact that this tournament is a lot less than it could be.

“It’s not right that the big European clubs don’t free up their young players when they are not in the first team,” Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, said. “It’s better for them to enjoy the second biggest competition in the world than to stay at home warming the substitutes’ bench.”

Blatter is not entirely wrong, although he needs a serious reality check. Firstly, clubs do not send their best players because league football is too important and you never know when you may need that promising teenage striker you have stashed in the youth team. Secondly, the competition is not seen as that important. And that is because clubs do not send their best players. How to break this chicken-and-egg situation? Schedule it at a time when the world is watching. In the summer, for example.

And, while you are at it, unify youth football around the world. It makes no sense that Uefa has under-21 football and the rest of the world deals in under-20s. And every confederation looks after its own, with no regard for scheduling. So Uefa’s Under-21 European Championship took place in June and three months later it is the Under-20 World Cup. What is the point?

Logic would suggest mimicking the senior players and holding the European Championship and World Cup at youth level every four years. But a player might be 17 for one World Cup and miss out on a call-up and then be too old for the next one. So it is fair that these competitions are biennial.

A modest proposal would be to schedule the youth European Championship (and their equivalents elsewhere) in even-numbered years. Yes, they will clash with the World Cup and the (senior) European Championship, but there are ways around it. Perhaps playing in late May, for example, just before the senior competition.

As for the Under-20 World Cup, save it for the summer in odd-numbered years and market the hell out of it. You will not have much competition. And you might find that football-starved fans enjoy tuning and watching the stars of tomorrow.

Provided, of course, that the stars show up. And the only way to guarantee that is not to play during the domestic season.

And another thing...

Finger of blame pointing at man in the middle

I would have thought that one of the key attributes to being a referee was the ability to ignore the abuse meted out by the crowd. Yet, sometimes, the officials can snap. Which is what happened to Massimo Busacca last weekend.

The Swiss referee, who is one of the top-rated officials on Uefa’s list and took charge of the Champions League final in May, turned to the Young Boys Berne fans during a cup game against Baden, of the fourth division, and gave them a middle-finger salute (what Germans call “Der Stinkefinger”). The Young Boys supporters’ abuse was not any more severe than that ordinarily handed out, it is just that it was persistent and, in Baden’s tiny lower-divsion ground, extremely audible.

Busacca apologised, saying that his actions could not be justified, and because “someone whose job it is to enforce the rules must be the first to respect them”.

While there is no question that he deserves to be punished (he was given a three-match ban) the silver lining is that we are all reminded that, as the cliché goes, they are human, too.

Salvation for Sampdoria

Who says you need an expensive team packed with foreign talent and a big-name manager to compete at the top? After beating Inter Milan 1-0 on Saturday, Sampdoria are second in Serie A. They have done it with a mainly domestic squad of cast-offs — Giampaolo Pazzini (unwanted by Fiorentina), Daniele Mannini (unwanted by Napoli), Antonio Cassano (unwanted by everyone) — and a manager who has had 17 jobs in the past 25 years (Luigi Del Neri).

Sometimes, just because you have failed elsewhere, it does not mean that you are bound to fail again.