I thought Sir Alex Ferguson had got off lightly, but the punishment meted out to Diego Maradona proved it for sure. One denigrates officials time after time and gets a slap on the wrist. The other gets hit with a two-month ban from work. And all Maradona did was suggest his critics were into sodomy.

Crime and punishment in football remains an unfathomable mess of contradictions. An offence can be witnessed by billions on television, and replayed frame by condemning frame, but if the referee did not see it at the time, Fifa reserves the right to say it never happened.

Or, as in the case of Eduardo da Silva, one man’s outrageous dive is another’s taking of evasive action over an advancing goalkeeper.

So the discrepancy over touchline bans should come as no surprise. It is just that, simultaneously, two of the most high-profile figures on planet football are caught up in this haphazard justice system.

On Sunday, Maradona was suspended by Fifa from all official duties for two months. Argentina could play twice before Christmas but their coach, banned from communicating with his players, will have to scrounge a ticket to watch his own team. The World Cup draw takes place in Cape Town on December 4 but, while 31 managers work feverishly on their plans, Maradona is banished.

The punishment is for a foul-mouthed outburst at journalists; the sort that Ferguson gives all the time, only he is a bit more careful to do it when no cameras are rolling.

And, yes, it is true that kids might have been watching at home when, in celebration of Argentina’s fraught qualification for the World Cup finals, Maradona grabbed his crotch.

A couple of girls from Coca-Cola were stood demurely behind the wild-eyed Argentina coach as he delivered his rant in Montevideo, Uruguay. Yes, there may have been shock behind their fixed smiles as he told his critics to “suck it”.

On that basis, I guess it was something Fifa could hardly ignore, but which is worse? Is it a rant from Maradona aimed at journalists who, having called him inept, then have the right to reply as forcefully as they like? A fair fight, in other words, with no real damage done apart from to some delicate sensibilities.

Or is it Ferguson’s incessant denigration of officials to which they have no form of comeback? And for which the Manchester United manager has received a punishment from the FA that must have given him the giggles.

Ferguson’s two-match touchline ban amounts to nothing. He is allowed to give the team talk and to pass tactical instructions to the bench by text, sign language or megaphone if he likes. He can address his players again at half-time and determine all the substitutions.

The only thing he cannot do is chew gum in the dugout and harangue the officials from close range. He can resume normal service after the Barclays Premier League match away to Portsmouth and the Carling Cup quarter-final against Tottenham Hotspur.

The FA insists that this is the most draconian measure yet for post-match comments; in this case, Ferguson’s attack on Alan Wiley’s fitness levels, ie, his professional competence. But that does not make the sanction either brave or fitting.

To call for a stronger penalty is to concur with Graham Poll (which is always worrying) as well as the publicity-seeking Alan Leighton, secretary for the referees’ union, Prospect. The referees should do themselves a favour by appointing a spokesperson far less shrill.

But someone has to speak up for the men in the middle given that they are banned from responding themselves. What they would say, if they could, is that the punishment for Ferguson is a pin-prick.

No campaign has been more high-profile in recent years than the FA’s demands for Respect for officialdom, yet who is more voluble than Ferguson in ignoring it?

He is a serial offender, called before the FA five times in six years on top of all the other offences the governing body has preferred not to pursue.

There are those who argue that Ferguson’s greatness as a manager puts him beyond punishment. One, bizarrely, wrote that his “managerial feats have been worth tens of millions of pounds to his rivals, raising the Premier League’s coefficient to permit a fourth side into the Champions League”, which might be true but is hardly the point. Should officialdom bow and scrape in gratitude?

If we are serious about cleaning up our game, about sparing referees from packs of snarling players, if we are serious about Respect then something meaningful has to be levied against managers who throw around terms like unfit, incompetent, craven and useless.

It is, of course, arguable whether touchline bans are an appropriate and enforceable punishment. Certainly not the FA’s version.

Uefa’s more stringent sanction prevents all contact with players on match night. Or at least it should do. Famously, José Mourinho was so determined to circumvent a ban while at Chelsea that he smuggled himself in and out of the Stamford Bridge dressing room by kit-skip under the noses of Uefa officials.

For the second leg against Bayern in Munich, he broadcast his team talk over loudspeakers. Perhaps Maradona will follow Mourinho’s example and hide in an executive box surreptitiously texting his instructions to the bench. Perhaps he will be on the phone to his players before kick-off.

Either way, at least he will know he has been banned. How will Ferguson notice any difference?

Air-conditioned World Cup bid ignores the fans

A friend advised me that when people die in Qatar, it is probably of boredom. He may exaggerate, but sitting by a pool watching another skyscraper rising from the sand is the nearest thing in Doha to a tourist industry.

In itself, that is probably not a reason for withholding the 2022 World Cup finals from Qatar. Nor, we are told, is the 40C heat in June and July because there will be air-conditioned stadiums to go with with the air-conditioned hotels, air-conditioned taxis and air-conditioned fan festivals.

They even say that fans will be allowed to drink, at least in restricted zones. But if Fifa’s idea of a good World Cup is to stage it in a nation with the same population as Calgary or Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, then clearly fans’ interests truly are low on the list of priorities.

Spare time? What's that, says Capello

Advised the other day that Rustenburg had fewer attractions than a Friday night in Sellafield, and no Gucci store for miles, Fabio Capello was unsympathetic about how his England players might pass their spare time next summer.

“They have one month to win the World Cup. How can they be bored?” he asked. Evidently he still has a little to learn about the English footballer.

Cook paints a sorry picture in Abu Dhabi

In a speech in Abu Dhabi last week, Garry Cook, the chief executive of Manchester City, told assembled guests that “people were wrong in saying that City are just a club from Manchester”. It was now, he said, “a club of the world”.

The Peter Kenyon “Paint The World Blue” award for marketing bull***t has its 2009 winner.