It might be the beautiful game, but there are grumblings aplenty coming from the corridors of the International Olympic Committee that the people who run football can show an ugly side.
Sepp Blatter and his Fifa officials often display 'utter arrogance' towards the Olympic family, one IOC member ranted recently in a Beijing hotel bar. The two organisations have issues - the latest being over doping and football's lenient attitude to it.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) has a uniform code for all 35 Olympic sports to combat the use of performance enhancing drugs. Thirty-four of the sports are in line with the code, but Fifa somehow views itself as the honourable exception.
After much public bickering, the long simmering dispute was taken to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and this week they published a non-binding opinion which confirmed that Fifa's anti-doping regulations did not correspond fully to Wada's code. The key issue is the appropriate penalty for a doping violation.
Wada's code calls for a two-year ban, while under Fifa's system players caught taking performance enhancing drugs can get away with a six or 12-month ineligibility period.
CAS said it agreed with Wada and most of the sporting world that two years was a 'necessary credible deterrent' against doping.