The traditional giants from Madrid and Barcelona are under increasing pressure from the commonsense approach of Galicia's Deportivo and Celta, says Sid Lowe

When Real Madrid beat Manchester United 3-2 at Old Trafford in March 2000, Spain’s best-selling newspaper, the sports daily Marca, threw its arms in the air and declared the players Eleven Di Stéfanos. There were no such plau­dits when Deportivo La Coruña re­peated the feat this year. Marca’s front page led on Steve Mc­Manaman’s goal ag­ainst Anderlecht two nights previously, while the coun­try’s second best seller, AS, broke the shock “news” that it would be virtually impossible to get tickets for the Madrid v Barelona derby. The Barcelona papers El Mundo Dep­ortivo and Sport are every bit as myopic.

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Two writes debate whether clubs are treated unfairly by national associations

Yes ~
In light of the current battle between the major European clubs and the French and Australian federations over players being released for November’s friendly in Mel­bourne, the uneasy agreement that has exist­ed for a century between countries and clubs may be close to severing. Arsène Wen­ger and FFF president Claude Sim­onet seem set to be the chief protagonists in this dispute.

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With growing doubts over football's dependence on TV, we asked five people from diverse areas of the game where they thought the relationship was going

Michael Dunford – chief executive, Everton
"I think the general assumption – rightly or wrongly – is that it would be unrealistic for any­one inside football to put hand on heart and say they believe that the prices paid for television rights will continue to keep rising. The general belief is that, in terms of price, we have now peaked – and once you have peaked there is only way to go.

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The recent wrangle ove coverage of the World Cup is only one symptom of the fear that the TV rights boom is over. Alan Tomlinson looks at the ramifications for FIFA

Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, is the quintessential marketing man, a salesman for sport’s biggest ev­ent, the World Cup. You’d think it would be the eas­iest selling job in the world. Guido Tognoni, FIFA’s top me­dia man for ten years until 1994, once told me: “In FIFA you don’t have to sell the product, it’s a self-seller. FIFA lives from one event, the World Cup, and this event lives from marketing and television receipts.”

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Craig Brown's reign was a pretty joyless one, but the blame for Scotland's plight lies elsewhere, says Ken Gall. And bidding for Euro 2008 will make things worse

The strangely high-pitched booing at the end of Scotland’s wretched World Cup tie against Latvia (courtesy of thousands of primary school children fortunate enough to receive free tickets) marked a slightly surreal end to Craig Brown’s term as nat­ion­al manager. Yet the manner of Brown’s departure was symptomatic of much of his eight years in charge. Once again we had the passionless Hampden oc­cas­ion, the tie against a Baltic state (entire stretches of his reign appear to have taken place against these coun­tries) and the unmerited victory somehow ground out against palpably more gifted opponents.

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