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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From the local chippy to class hotels, Firoz Kassam has been a success in business. Martin Brodestsky evaluates his time as chairman of Oxford United

Distinguishing features Kassam is a self-made multi-millionaire, with three hotels in London, and he has just received planning permission for another one in Oxford. Kassam came to England from Tanzania as a teenager and worked his way up from the local chippy until he got to where he is now – with money to waste on a no-hope lower division football club with delusions of grandeur.

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John Harding pays tribute to Cliff Lloyd, the man who formed what is known today as the Professional Footballers Association

Cliff Lloyd, OBE, who died earlier this month, was the last link with the old Players’ Union, the organisation reformed by Billy Meredith back in 1907 and now known as the Professional Footballers Association. Indeed, Lloyd was one of the last to speak to Meredith when, in 1957, he visited the ailing Welshman in his Manchester home. Lloyd recalled that Meredith had a string of  medals in a box beneath his bed which, he pointed out, had done little for him in financial terms.

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The last thing clubs in crisis need is squabbling, whether within their bored or with their own supporters. We investigate the plunging finances and legal fees

Of all the things football clubs should be spending money on, lawyers would have to be near the bottom of anyone’s list. The case of New­castle United, however, in which they are being sued by their own fans, may prove to have last­ing significance. As has been widely publicised, the club sold bonds for £500 which app­eared to guarantee fans the right to a seat for ten years (“your name will be fixed permanently to your seat” promised Kevin Keeg­­an ). With the expansion of the ground, however, the club are now proposing to move 4,000 season ticket holders in the Milburn and Lea­zes stands, including some bond holders, to less attractive positions, so that their current seats can be used for corporate hospitality.

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Hampden Park's refurbishment has been expensive, unwanted and left Queens Park struggling for survival. Gary Oliver reports

Critics deride the project as having been profligate, ostentatious and a monument to vanity – not the Millennium Dome, but refurbished Hampden Park, which has begun the new century facing another financial crisis. The transformed 52,000-capacity ground continues to be owned by Third Division Queen’s Park and its rebuilding was administered by a subsidiary of the club, National Stadium plc. However, a three-year £65 million makeover has left the amateur club crippled by debt.

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