The council wants to build Hull a new ground. David Lloyd, rugby league and crashing phone shares stand in the way Craig Ellyard reports

Prior to the Taylor Report, Hull City’s Boothferry Park was one of the newest football stadiums in the country. Yet even then, though barely 50 years old, the ground once described as the Wembley of the north was but a neglected shell of its former self. After Hillsborough, new and improved stadiums sprang up all over the country, yet Boothferry and its incumbent club continued to rot. Now, though, a bright future of shiny plastic seats and a trendy new super stadium awaits City sup­porters. Possibly.

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A sceptical Neville Hadsley wonders if Foleshill Gasworks will ever become Arena 2000

The most potent symbol of Coventry City FC these days is not Gordon Strachan urging on the troops from inside his technical area, but a gas tower in the north of the city. This historic relic – local folklore has it that it acted as a navigational marker for Nazi bombers in the Second World War – stands on the site of Coventry’s proposed state-of-the-art stadium, Arena 2000. While it stands, scepticism about the project will remain among many Sky Blues fans.

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Diego Maradona's new book has been the talk of Argentina. Chris Moss found few surprises in it

When it comes to resurrection, Diego Maradona is up there with the saints and prophets. Banned from playing for cocaine abuse, then ephedrine-laced cock­tails and now under doctor’s orders, hopeless as a manager, aged 40 but looking 50, he has turned to lit­erature. A new autobiography, Yo Soy El Diego (I am Diego), to be published in Britain next spring, is the edited recordings of chat, babble and bluster taped in Cuba by two “journalist friends” from Buenos Aires

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Brazil are in turmoil, Peru are in despair, and Chile are in the pool with a load of Colombian women. It's never dull in South America, as Leopoldo Iturra discovers

Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his use of magic realism, a style which deliberately exaggerates Latin American folk­lore and which allows anything to happen – from the appearance of Romanies who invent snow to immortal incestuous families.

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Cheltenham have suddenly left their neighbours Gloucester City far behind. NOw they kind of miss each other, says Mark Herron

Since Cheltenham Town joined the Nationwide League, not everything has changed for the better. One of the most significant differences in the match-day routine has been brought about by the sudden lack of a genuine local rival. No more opportunities to cheer as news of another goal conceded comes through on the radio. Half the enjoyment has disappeared over­night.

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