It may not have quite the same ring as Joe Frazier versus Muhammad Ali, but the news that Luciano Rossi is to run again against Vladimir Lisin for the Presidency of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) takes us about as close to the Thrilla in Manila as the dry old world of sports administration is likely to get.

The two sexuagenarians’ previous clash in 2018 featured an allegation of a death/kidnapping plot, a police escort and a knife-edge finish, with Lisin winning by 148 votes to 144.

One must hope that this time around the main stories generated by the contest, which is set to culminate on November 30 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, relate instead to the finer points of ISSF strategy.

But even if they do, the Italian and the Russian are big characters; no election involving the pair is likely to be dull.

As he told me four years ago in Munich, shooting is Rossi’s life; now as then, his campaign is bound to be eloquent, impassioned and brimming with ideas.

Lisin’s strong suit is money: upon election, the steel tycoon committed to earmarking $10 million (£8.2 million/€9.75 million) of his own money to establish a development fund for the sport.

This, mark you, is an International Federation that otherwise tends to be highly dependent on its Olympic subsidy.

In its 2017 financial year, I calculated, this subsidy amounted to more than 80 per cent of ISSF income.

Re-reading my interview with the Russian in Munich, there is one snippet in particular which strikes me as even more interesting in the context of the tense, increasingly polarised world we now inhabit.

As he explained, Lisin grew up in Siberia, yet his father used to play football for the club today known as Shakhtar, based traditionally in Donetsk, part of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas that Russia appears to be trying to take over in the war it has unleashed on its south-western neighbour.

"Donetsk was called Stalino [as it was between 1924 and 1961]," the then newly-elected ISSF President told me.

"The football team was composed completely of miners.

"The 120 best players among miners from all over Russia came to Stalino.

"Then they went to Sochi, made a selection, and my father was selected to stay with Donetsk."

Re-encountered today, the anecdote seems to say quite a lot about how the old Soviet Union regarded its constituent republics, including Ukraine, under arrangements the like of which some fear Moscow may want to reinstate.

As reported by insidethegames editor Duncan Mackay, Lisin has called for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine war.

Nevertheless, in June, several countries - including Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Britain, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and the United States - sent a letter to the ISSF calling on the Russian to stand down.

We may be heading for another cliffhanger, this time on the Red Sea.

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Talking of football, you may have noticed a bit of a buzz about a game last weekend at Wembley.

The England women’s team beat perennial tournament-winners Germany to lift Euro 2022 and end the 56 years of hurt since Sir Alf Ramsey’s men’s team triumphed, also on home soil, also against German opposition, in the 1966 FIFA World Cup.

I can just about remember that great day and, while the result was hugely exciting for a small boy just beginning to graduate from kicking a beach ball around the garden, it now seems to me that there was more sheer joy associated with this week’s triumph than that World Cup win.

It was only in the 1950s that Britain’s men had been well and truly knocked off their pedestal as the best practitioners of the most popular of the many sports their nation had bequeathed the world.

I am not sure we had really come to terms with our reduced circumstances.

So there was huge pressure to show that we could be world champions when playing at home - and a lot of relief once that feat was duly accomplished by Ramsey’s wing-less wonders.

After the match, according to a book called The Inside Story of England’s 1966 World Cup Triumph by Roger Hutchinson, one England player, George Cohen, sat on a bench muttering: "It’s bloody ridiculous. I don’t feel anything. I don’t. I really don’t."

Contrast that with the exuberant post-match press conference invasion staged by England’s so-called Lionesses.

In one important way it strikes me that this Euro 2022 victory actually bears comparison with the 1953 mauling by Ferenc Puskás’s Hungarians which demonstrated beyond all doubt that football’s many pupils had overtaken the game’s original masters.

As Peter Chapman wrote about the aftermath of that crushing 6-3 defeat in his quirkily brilliant The Goalkeeper’s History of Britain, "You’d felt it coming for so long that the waiting was the problem.

"The tension was off.

"The hordes had finally stormed down from the hills."

Similarly, for a decade or more, it has felt like that elusive second major trophy victory for England was coming.

And with the tension now off, perhaps more victories will follow.

The win will of course provide a commercial boost for women’s football in the UK, but not I suspect as big a boost as its chief cheerleaders believe that it warrants.

Why do I say this? Partly because the commentariat invariably exaggerates the impact of noteworthy sports achievements in their immediate aftermath, when demand for soundbites and column-inches is voracious.

Partly because women’s football is growing fast anyway.

But also partly because of what, rightly or wrongly, I have deduced about the attitude of the men who control the world game.

As I wrote ahead of the last Women’s World Cup in 2019:

"So promising do prospects look for women’s football that you might have thought FIFA would be making the women’s game their out-and-out growth priority.

"After all, while revenues associated with the Women’s World Cup are a fraction of those accruing from its men’s counterpart, there seems no reason why, over time, viewership, and hence income-generating potential, should not rise much closer to the $5 billion-plus (£4 billion/€4.8 billion) hauled in by the World Cup itself - and FIFA desperately needs to diversify its one-trick-pony business model.

"That would take patience, however - one of the few commodities that is in desperately short supply in the modern football industry.

"Instead, [FIFA bosses] seem to be prioritising raising FIFA’s exposure to the highly lucrative European men’s club game."

I have not - yet - seen much cause to change my view on this, though now more than ever, I live in hope.