Uefa, St Petersburg, Gazprom and pointless bespoke tunnel carpeting

You probably haven’t heard of Marcel Ries, the Lausanne-based metalsmith who since 2009 has been tasked with engraving the winner’s name on to major Uefa trophies in the moments after the final whistle blows, while someone charges the glitter-cannons and the victors prepare to hoist their freshly personalised pot aloft. Perhaps it was to Ries that Uefa turned on Tuesday, to find out if he is as adept with the Tipp-Ex brush (ask your grandparents) as he is with an engraving pen, and as efficient at taking names off stuff as he is at indelibly adding them.

It is curious that Uefa, in contrast to the other major Swiss institution Guardian readers have been reading about this week, are so very keen on publicly putting names on everything. But though it insisted on Tuesday that “at present there are no plans to change the venue”, it might at this point be regretting the decision to emblazon the name of St Petersburg, the city whose Gazprom Arena the Gazprom-sponsored organisation for some reason chose to host the 2022 Big Cup final, on every single ball used in the competition this year.

Whatever its statements say, Uefa is universally predicted to eventually conclude that, as tousle-haired party organiser Boris Johnson put it a little earlier, “it is inconceivable that major international football tournaments can take place in Russia”. Such news will be particularly, and in numerous ways, deflating for these suddenly obsolete balls, who will have to take their thermal bonding, rhombus carcasses and high-grade butyl bladders to the nearest discount bin. Meanwhile it might be time to order a few official Road to Saint Petersburg 22 skips in which to dump the enormous quantity of suddenly obsolete stickers, signage and even