I am reliably informed that the football season is coming to an end.

It used to finish with a bang - the FA Cup final - but these days it just fizzles out.

This year the carcass will draw one more desperate breath, thanks to Euro 2020: a drawn-out, half-baked melodrama, if ever there was one.

I used to be a fanatical fan of a fantastic game, but these days footie just seems futile.

For half a century I was a Swindon Town season ticket holder, and would have gone to the end of the earth to see them, or at least to Hull and back, on a wet Tuesday night.

I even worked on the sports desk of this paper for five years, wondering if there could ever be a better job in the world than being paid to watch football. Nowadays I wouldn’t go to a live football match if you paid me.

If any of the billionaires who run it are interested, I could list everything that’s wrong with the game, starting with the way they have systematically removed all the humanity, charm and romance it used to have, and replaced it with greed. But why should they care what the suckers think?

The football magazine FourFourTwo recently produced an article called 67 Things Everybody Hates About Modern Football, and I not only found myself agreeing with them all, but coming up with at least another 67 of my own.

Last week, my son, who for some reason is a passionate Spurs fan, told me he can’t wait for the season to end - partly because of fortunes on the pitch, but mainly because of the utter contempt the club has for its fans.

I told him to be thankful he doesn’t support Swindon Town, where bad results and off-the-field shenanigans have been a fixture for decades.

But, deep down, I think all football fans already know how ugly the so-called ‘beautiful game’ has become.

I divorced myself from Swindon Town when they appointed Paolo Di Canio as manager, an unsavoury character who didn’t deserve to occupy the same office as men I admired, like Glenn Hoddle and Lou Macari - and didn’t turn out to be a very good manager, anyway.

Overnight, it wasn’t my club anymore, and if you don’t have an allegiance in football, what’s the point?

Except I discovered allegiance in sport is a false god.

When yet another footballer taking a dive and faking injury became one too many, I switched to other sports - chiefly cycling and cricket - where there is still joy in seeing your favourites, but greater joy in the technique, passion, dedication, hard work, intelligence and bravery of the winners.

Football is a sacred cow, and there will always be enough believers in the emperor’s new clothes to make fortunes for the tycoons who hijacked it. And surely an old bloke moaning about how much better it was in his day couldn’t actually turn out to be right.

Could I?