Day eight of the WSC advent calendar and we have Jesus for you. Former Atlético Madrid president Jesús Gil, that is. In issue 157, March 2000, Phil Ball reported on how the club had been thrown into disarray by the arrest of their controversial ex-president on charges of embezzlement

So this time it really does look like curtains for the most famous man in Spain, the man who once dec­lared that if they sent him to prison he would buy the building from the town council.

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Time for a chat with Mark E Smith of The Fall, whose football experiences include encounters with a goalkeeping plumber and a controversial match against the Icicle Works

You grew up in Salford, which is more United than City. Is there a reason why you’re a City fan?
Not really, just to be contrary I suppose. Also you want to support the opposite team to your dad and my dad had been a United fan. Back in the 1950s he’d to go to away games on his bike – he’d cycle to places like Leicester. But I converted him to City. I had another United connection, though. I applied for a clerical job at the Edwards family’s meat factory after I left school. It was £9 a week. It might even have been Martin Edwards who did the interview. He said “Well the meat wagons come in, just sit there, fill in these forms and file them.” I said, “When would the job start?” and he said “You’ve started” and he left me in the office.

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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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