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.
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.
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.
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.
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.