The new TV deal may be more or less recognisable. It's the one after that will spark revolution, says Patrick Harverson

If you think the Premier League’s new television deal will be different when it is unveiled sometime this year, wait until the next one. The shape of the soon-to-be-negotiated contract will represent a big step forward from the present one, but the contract after that will reflect something altogether more interesting – a rev­olution, not just in the way football games are sold by clubs and acquired by media companies, but also in the way they are paid for and watched by fans.

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With the next Premier League deal in the offing, ITV’s Jim Rosenthal discusses changes in broadcasting since the arrival of Sky and casts doubt on Duncan Ferguson’s mystique

What has been the main impact of Sky since 1992 from the broadcasters’ point of view?
They’ve taken football coverage on to a new level and basically, for us, they have created a lot of work within the industry. Foot­ball saved Sky, but in return people in TV recognise what Sky have done for football. They have ob­viously created a vast am­ount of wealth for the game – wealth that football has spent as it always will, not necessarily wisely. If you give football club chairmen £1, they will always spend £1.10.

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Cris Freddi looks at little Brazil's clash with mighty Exeter City in Rio de Janeiro in 1914

We don’t really chortle at the thought of Brazil taking on a small English club. We understand that these were pioneering days, when a non-League club like Exeter City had not been professional for six years but could field Eng­land players of the future in Dick Pym and Jack Fort. A tour of South America then was probably regarded in the same way as a trip to some­where like Chad or Belize today.

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Desperate Australian clubs are once again queuing up to employ faded British strikers. Matthew Hall explains why

It can no longer be ignored. Relations between Britain and Australia have sunk to a new low and it’s nothing to do with trade wars or our flawed bid to become a republic. It is, however, all to do with current rates of exchange. It goes a little like this: we send you Nick Cave, saucy soap starlets and Harry Kewell. What do we get in return? Hale and Pace, backpackers by the planeload, and Ian bleedin’ Rush.

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What do you do when you stop being the world's best player? Diego Maradona still hasn't come up with a satisfactory answer, as Martin Gambarotta reports

Of all the visits Diego Maradona received while ailing with a faulty heart in a private clinic in Buenos Aires, one stood out for its symbolism and could well have a place in local football lore in the future. The visit lasted 15 minutes. Enough time for an 18-year-old boy by the name of Javier Saviola to drop his national team shirt at the feet of Diego’s hospital bed. Saviola, River Plate’s new sensation, had just ended the season as the league’s top scorer. Only one other player had accomplished a similar feat when he was younger: Diego Maradona.

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