This week should have been spent cautiously hoping Roy Hodgson’s England had started to put a miserable summer behind them; or looking forward to the return of the hi-octane Premier League soap opera; or even celebrating the fact that 55,000 people will brave tube engineering works to watch England’s women play Germany at Wembley on Sunday.

Instead the good in the national game has again been obscured by a murky cesspit of moral turpitude. Football has endured a few “worst weeks” recently, from the racism storm around the John Terry and Luis Suárez incidents to those depressingly recurrent Fifa crises and the more recent Malky Mackay text messaging storm.

But, like a warped version of the Craig David ditty, seven days that began with outrage over Fifa’s ham-fisted attempt to massage the release of Michael Garcia’s World Cup bidding investigation and concluded with Dave Whelan’s half-hearted attempts at an apology seemed to raise (or lower) the bar.

From Sheffield United’s confused and confusing response to the return of the convicted rapist Ched Evans to Whelan’s decision to re-employ Mackay being compounded by his depressingly out-of-date views on race, around every corner there was a furious, frenzied, exhausting argument on morality. So much so there was barely time to squeeze in a debate about the culpability of the FA for the travelling England fans signing “Fuck the IRA” for 10 minutes to the jaunty backing of the risible supporters’ band.

Hanging over it all was the stench continuing to emanate from the black marble halls of Fifa HQ in Zurich as Sepp Blatter schemed in his bunker under an onslaught that has become so familiar that it barely registers. Flicking through his playbook of diversionary tactics, the Fifa president unleashed a storm of statements to deflect attention from his attempt to close the book on the multiple question marks hanging over Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022.

Sheffield United also twisted in the wind, hiding behind obtuse statements throughout a month-long saga that was sparked by the release of Evans on licence after serving two and a half years of a five-year sentence. Their response, first saying nothing and then allowing Evans back to train as though it was inevitable, smacked of expediency. The suspicion must be that they hoped the furore would die down and they could quietly reintegrate their former top scorer.

Thanks to Jessica Ennis-Hill, Charlie Webster and others, that didn’t happen. A decade ago it might have done and the Evans case is a good example of why the always-on, seven-day, Twitter-fuelled frenzy that surrounds the modern game is both a blessing and a curse.

For years When Saturday Comes has run a small feature that documents the ways football is seeping into every part of modern life. These days it feels like an anachronism, such is the extent to which modern life has run up the white flag. Yet the structures that underpin the game have refused to keep up. What is now a multi-billion-pound business maintains the practices of a cottage industry, with the avalanche of money distorting values still further.

Supposedly canny business figures and sharp legal minds seem to turn to jelly in football’s moral maze. Old boys’ networks abound. The FA’s antiquated rulebook is frequently found wanting. Fifa continues to pull football out of shape simply to keep its senior figures in the manner to which they have long become accustomed.

Yet at the top end, broadcasting and sponsorship money continues to pour in – not least at Fifa where no amount of graft can derail the money-making potential of the “product”.

This week more than 750,000 fans will pack English football grounds, more than 1.9 million adults of varying ability will play and millions more will watch on television. Such is the sport’s continued intoxicating appeal that it might be the only point when they can block out all the oppressive, depressing noise that surrounds it for the rest of the week.