Now Senor Perez has been called many things - for one, he has been accused of destroying football and distorting the transfer market with the obscene amounts of money he throws around to secure the services of the world's best footballers - but a "statesman"? Is that not a bit rich?

But Phil, an Aston Villa fan brought up on all tales of 'Deadly' Doug Ellis, knows his football and recognises that Perez has mastered the art of conveying how a businessman who has got into football should look and act like, in contrast to the very many in similar positions in English football.

This does not mean that the 62-year-old's policy of hiring 'Galaticos' will work or is good for football. It seems to me it is making the modern game more like show business. Indeed, such a policy resembles the old Hollywood studios tactic of hiring the biggest number of stars as possible. Their acquisition may not have resulted in great films, but it ensured other studios did not have access to them.

Perez's defence is that his actions are part of Real Madrid tradition dating back to the 1950s and the time of Santiago Bernabeu, the club's legendary president. After all, how is the acquisition of Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka any different to the capture of Alfredo Di Stefano or Ferenc Puskas? The sums of money are much, much higher but the essence of the policy is still the same: If there is a world-class player out there, get him.
Perez also argues that Real had three years of neglect to make up for, hence the decision to buy Ronaldo, Kaka and Karim Benzema in quick succession for a mouth-watering £170m.

In his first interview since his very public shopping spree, Perez made it clear he would only speak in Spanish. Yet both before and after our chat on camera, he conversed in perfectly good English. And during the interview, there were occasions when it was clear he had understood the question before it had been interpreted because he began answering it almost straight away. His decision to respond in Spanish is a sure sign of a politician who wants to be sure of what he is saying in the language he is most comfortable.

Anyway, you can judge for yourself by watching the interview embedded below:

One thing Perez has in common with most other football chairmen I have met, or players and managers for that matter, is that they love recalling their days of glory. So the first thing he did was to take me to the window and point out the buildings that have been built on what was once the club's training ground, which was sold off to finance the extravagant purchases in Perez's previous regime. Incidentally, he denies such a radical move will be required this time around, insisting Ronaldo and company are "investment" footballers who will bring money into the club.

When I subsequently mentioned to Perez that I had attended my first Champions League final in 1998 when Real Madrid had beaten Juventus 1-0 at the Amsterdam Arena, their first win in Europe's premier tournament after many years, Perez immediately informed me that he had not been president at the time. He had been president in 2002, though, and went on to wax eloquently of the club's triumph at Hampden, when Zinedine Zidane, whom he had spent a then world-record £47m, scored a magical goal to give Real a 2-1 win over Bayer Leverkusen.

Come to think of it, Perez is no different to 'Deadly' Doug in that respect. Ellis never liked to dwell on Villa's greatest moments of the early Eighties, when they won the old First Division Championship, the European Cup and the European Super Cup, beating Barcelona no less. Maybe that's because he hadn't been in the Villa Park boardroom at the time.

But there I was with him on the 0900 train to Darlington - the quiet train as he recalled it from his days as an MP when he regularly took it to return to his Sedgefield constituency.

This Friday was anything but quiet. We had no sooner left King's Cross, London, when Dr John Reid, his former home secretary, slid into the seat next to him.

Blair wouldn't talk about politics but he was keen to expand on the idea that sport can reach beyond the playing fields, improve both bodies and minds, and help bridge the gap between divided communities.

The opportunity to talk to him was provided by his journey to Sunderland where he was visiting his sports foundation. Set up in November 2007, it has so far helped 10,000 children from 350 schools receive tennis coaching.

In convoy, on the way to the sports foundation from Darlington station, I was provided with my one and only glimpse of being a VIP.

Escorted by speeding motorbike outriders, I found myself being driven on the wrong side of the road, while traffic on either was held back and our vehicles sped past more red lights than I can imagine.

Prime minister he may no longer be but a shadow of that power is quite telling.

At the foundation, as he signed yet another tennis ball from an admiring young boy, it felt fleetingly as if the Blair of a decade ago was back but when I asked him would he like to be back at number 10, he wouldn't be drawn.

For his real feelings, we shall have to wait for his memoirs, which are some time away but should be an interesting read.

For many years I dined out on Neville Cardus's great saying that if everything about England was destroyed except for the laws of cricket, life in this country could be recreated. I am not sure if even Cardus would advance that position today.

Sport like all social activities reflects life but may not tell much about how to live it.

So football claims to unite people across barbed wire and an Indian and Pakistani can form a doubles partnership at this year's Wimbledon when the politicians of the two nations struggle to be in the same room as each other.

Hyperbole? Perhaps.

Nevertheless sport has the ability to recreate the modern version of the old village square meeting place, albeit in front of a television set and not the village well.

Wimbledon this last fortnight has been the supreme example of it particularly during those moments when Andy Murray looked like he might make history.

I always judge these moments by the number of times many of my friends, who have no interest in sport, indeed great indifference to it, ask me rather detailed, specific questions about a particular player.

It happened at Wimbledon in 2008 when Murray beat Richard Gasquet and got the centre court to react like a football crowd. And it happened several times this Wimbledon, or at least until late on Friday evening when Murray finally lost.

But perhaps the best example of how sport reaches out to parts of society not easily reached is best provided by the 2005 Ashes series.

The 2005 series ranks with 1981 as the two great Ashes series of the last quarter of a century, their greatness lying not so much because England won but because memorable performances on the field of pay lifted the play and the players on to a different plane. It made many people who would not normally look at a cricket match sit up and take notice.

Sport also enables us to evoke history without creating divisions, not often true in other walks of life.

Also often when you invoke sporting history you almost effortlessly wipe away the bitterness and rancour that attended the past. So this Wimbledon much was made of Fred Perry being the last British men's champion in 1936 without too many references to how wretchedly Perry was treated by the then bosses of Wimbledon because he was not from the right social class.

Cricket as the most chronicled of games is full of history and a Test series has the added inbuilt advantage that it provides a narrative for the entire summer, sports version of the classic story with a beginning a middle and an end.

Both 1981 and 2005 were similar in that respect, a beginning belonging to Australia, a middle dominated by England and an end that saw England finally triumph. The 2005 series was in retrospect more satisfying as the certainty of the English triumph was doubtful until the last few hours.

It reminds me of my old colleague Jim White, when Manchester United beat Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-final through Ryan Giggs wonder goal on the way to the Treble in 1999. While the match was on he was in turmoil and feared the outcome and did not enjoy it.

United's chairman at the time, Martin Edwards could not even watch it but in retrospect it was the most wonderful of triumphs.

But, by the end of the match, Jim, a keen United supporter, could sit back and savour every moment.

Whatever the result if 2009 provides even half the memories of 1981 and 2005 then it will be worth all the media hype it has already generated.

But more significant may be the collateral damage it has done to football's governing bodies, in particular the less than brilliant relationship between the Premier League and the FA.

On Friday when the Premier League decided to take its ball home, effectively sentencing Setanta to death, the FA did little to hide its displeasure.

The Premier League's version of the story is that far from being uncaring, it had been more than considerate and mindful of Setanta's problems for many months.

Talks between the Premier League and Setanta have been going back to last November. League officials lost count of the number of times Setanta asked for "another 72 hours".

Matters were not helped by the fact that it never seemed to be clear who was in charge of Setanta. It seemed every time the League picked up the phone to Setanta, there was a different person to speak to. Not the sort of thing that inspires confidence if you are worried about getting paid on time.

In fact, the tipping point was not reached last Friday, when the rights were withdrawn, but Monday last week.

That is when the League made clear that while Setanta had until Friday to come up with the money, it had also started a parallel process of searching for another broadcaster.

It was quite clear from this that it did not expect Setanta to meet the deadline and anticipated getting another call asking for a further 72 hours. As indeed transpired at the end of the week.

The Premier League may also have known that there was a VAT bombshell ticking away inside Setanta which would make a rescue of the company difficult.

Registered outside the UK, Setanta had been in discussions about its possible VAT liability. It was clear there was a potential VAT bill of £50m and this emerged during the due diligence carried out by investors keen to rescue the company. It was this that scuppered the anticipated rescue bid last week.

All this meant that on Friday, when Setanta made yet another plea to the Premier League for more time, the answer was very brief.

The Premier League feels fully justified in what it did and its prompt reselling of the rights to ESPN means it has - as marketing men like to put it - come out revenue neutral.

All through the Setanta saga, the FA has also been very bullish, believing the improved state of the England team means its assets are more attractive and could be easily resold.

True, ITV has the option on England matches but they have to exercise that option on home friendlies which can hardly be that attractive, especially given ITV's delicate current financial position.

The rest of the FA's portfolio - FA Cup, Community Shield, and under-21 matches- is decent. And it did front load its Setanta contract, so £50m of the £150m was already in the bank.

But for all the talk in Soho Square, this hardly compares with the live rights to the Premier League. And though the FA is believed to have made a 45% profit on its previous contracts when it signed with Setanta, its faith in its football rights will be severely tested back in the market.

Setanta does have some money in an escrow account but the administrators are unlikely to allow any sports bodies access to that.

Other sports who had signed with Setanta will also be affected, but in the main, it was overseas rights for things like US golf and the IPL, so the impact on them should not be that great.

The situation is very different for the SPL however.

Not for Celtic or Rangers who are big enough to withstand what will be for them a small loss of income.

But even if another broadcaster, like Sky, does come in, some of the smaller Scottish clubs might struggle to cope with the chill winds in the wake of Setanta's demise.

Those chill winds will also blow between Soho Square and the Premier League as the implications of Setanta's collapse unfold.

Surely his fingers will be itching to bowl on what promises to be a slow turner at Cardiff where he would be lethal?

Warne says not, although I suspect that the temptation to rip off his tie and jacket and jump from the commentary box on to the field and say, "Ricky, next over mate", could be huge.

What is undoubtedly true, and quite a turn up for the books, is that one of the greatest spinners in the history of the game now acknowledges that England may have the upper hand in spin during this Ashes series.

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He is not merely impressed with Graeme Swann but also Adil Rashid.

Rashid, of course, is already something of an English sensation, being a leg-spinner from Yorkshire, where such back-of-the-hand stuff has historically been distrusted.

Warne's assessment of Rashid is purely on his cricketing abilities. But the fact that he is willing to lavish such praise for a bowler yet to make his Test debut suggests England may have an exceptional talent in the making.

This is all the more interesting given that Warne has not changed his views about Monty Panesar: that Monty has not played 38 Tests but the same Test 38 times - in other words he has failed to develop as a bowler.

Interestingly, for a player who in the last decade-and-a-half has laid waste to English batting, the Englishman he rates as the best English player of his era is still the man he encountered in his first Ashes series, Graham Gooch.

Warne, of course, could not be more of a missionary for Twenty20 cricket. He sees it as providing scope for both batsmen and bowlers to experiment, while fast bowlers can learn to bowl slow to stop being hit off the park.

But while he clearly exults in the role he has played in shaping the Rajasthan Royals team, this has not made him want to go into coaching let alone guide Australia.

And for all his love for this new form of the game, he remains the great traditionalist for whom the pinnacle of cricket is still Test cricket.

What is even more significant is that he does not share the talk among some in Australian cricket, that the Ashes is no longer the exclusive focus of the Australians. Since the age of four, says Warne, an Australian is brought up to believe that you must not let the "Poms" beat you in anything.

This summer Warne will hope to describe Aussie success rather than mastermind it, but he is certain the intensity of the struggle will not be any less.

At the Olympic Museum wherever you turned there were sports administrators playing politicians and not a few real-life politicians taking time off from coping with the recession to show their mastery of sports.

So there was Mario Pescante, the Italian sports minister, just as he was on the point of explaining why his Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had sold Kaka to Real Madrid (it seems Berlusconi was keen to look more of a realist in these bleak times), he was dragged away to talk to the governor of Tokyo, a man who says the bid process is more taxing then managing a city of 13 million people.

Just as the Japanese and Italian politicians conferred around a corner came the governor of the central bank of Brazil leading to a supporter of Rio saying exultantly: "This is the new reality in these times of economic hardship. When did the governor of the central bank of a country come to address members of the International Olympic Committee? He did so to explain why Rio can and will be able to finance the Olympics."

Words which would have interested Richard Daley, Mayor of Chicago, who not long before that had emerged from presenting the city's case to the 93 International Olympic Committee members present.

The Rio supporter's words were certainly meant as a jibe to Chicago, which alone of the four 2016 bids - Rio, Madrid and Tokyo - is privately financed as all United States bids have always been. Except when the symbols of American capitalism such as the car industry are in ruins it is hard to see how a private sector bid can match a government-supported one.

This may explain why the IOC members grilled Chicago more than any other bid. Twenty-two questions which made Chicago overrun its time. Some in the Tokyo team felt insulted they had not merited so many questions although the general view was that this showed members had doubts about Chicago's financing. But one member I spoke to gave Chicago high marks for its presentation.

Chicago was also the only one who came to Lausanne complete with their own anti-group. As IOC members trooped into the museum they were met by No Games Chicago citizens and handed a book of evidence which made the case why: it lacks money, it is not competent, it lacks infrastructure and does not have public support.

Chicago's bid team response is that the no group does not amount to much and when the IOC evaluation commission visited the city the no group could not muster much support. All I can say is the book of evidence would make a very convenient door-stopper.

The show stopper for Chicago would, of course, be Barack Obama arguing the case for his home city. Chicago is keeping its counsel as to whether he will come to Copenhagen in October when the decision is made. There is little doubt their rivals are worried his star factor would overwhelm them. For Wednesday's meeting Obama did little, no videos just two still photos. But his senior adviser provided a video and on Wednesday morning Chicago e-mailed in some joy that Obama had effectively appointed a European-style sports minister, something that has always been alien to the American tradition of organising sports but it seen as showing his concern for sports.

The effect of star personalities having an impact on bids has been a factor ever since 2005 when Prime Minister Tony Blair won London the 2012 Games, reinforced by the Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin securing Sochi the 2014 Winter Olympics. The IOC has even considered whether they should ban the presence of heads of state and government and decided they could not. All 2016 bids are debating who could possibly match Obama, with the Japanese team keen for the presence of their crown prince and princess - they are unlikely to come.

Rio, of course, will have the feisty President Lula but in addition their trump card is the emotional one of no games ever having been held in Latin America. How can the Olympics be universal if it ignores such a huge part of the world? Chicago is certainly getting riled by it and at least their media is wondering if this not the sort of emotional blackmail that should not be allowed.

Far removed from sports but just the sort of thing that is top of the agenda when sports meets politics as it always does at the Olympics.

Nevertheless, the impact of the worldwide economic downturn may explain why the IOC is changing one of the major planks of its policy and allowing pay channels the opportunity to bid for the right to screen the Summer and Winter Games from 2014 onwards.

The blue riband events, such as the 100m, and the opening and closing ceremonies would, he insisted, still be available on free-to-air stations.

On top of that, any pay channel would be required to show 200 hours and 100 hours of action from the Summer and Winter Games respectively on terrestrial television. "Our mantra," says Rogge, "is maximum audience, audience before revenue."

Interestingly, Rogge told me that the IOC has had fruitful discussions with former Football Association executive director David Davies, who is heading the first review in 10 years of the 'crown jewels' list that guarantees major sporting events are broadcast on free-to-air TV in Britain.

When I put it to Rogge that, in Britain, sports like cricket had made promises to preserve free to air broadcasting then subsequently sold all the rights to pay television, he responded sharply that the Olympics was different.

Reflecting on the Games more generally, back in August, just after Beijing, Rogge had emphasised to me that China had taken the Olympics to a new level and London could not afford a drop in standards.

Now, in the wake of the downturn, he was keener to talk about how the two Games represent two very different countries with vastly different traditions. Beijing was the Games of the world's most populous country, he said, but London will be the Games of the nation that invented modern sports.

Rogge admitted London may have to rework its budget to ensure it is ready to host the biggest sporting event in the world, but insisted corners must not be cut when it comes to the facilities offered to competitors. They, he said, are sacrosanct.

Interviewing Rogge is always like a visit to your family doctor. There is something calm and reassuring about his manner, irrespective of how momentous any declarations he may make may be.

He once suggested, after persistent questioning from me, that he would like to get me under his surgeon's knife - he used to practise as one - but that was when the IOC was recovering from the dark days of the Salt Lake corruption crisis and before the miracle of Sydney, which led to the rebirth of the Games.

The only time he seemed weary was when I asked him about drugs and the ongoing disagreement with football about the 'whereabouts' scheme. Rogge has little patience with sports officials who seem to agree on issues at conferences then suggest later that they did not know what they were agreeing to.

He made the drugs issue one of the central themes of his presidency and is proud that much progress has been made. But he accepts that, like death and taxes, drugs in sport will always be with us. The aim is to make it as difficult as possible for the drugs cheats by introducing proper policing.

While they will not produce any binding decisions they could tell us a lot about the likely shape of the movement over the next decade, including the chances of a first British member of the IOC executive board since the 1950s.

The most crucial meeting is the one on Wednesday when the four cities bidding for the 2016 Games - Rio, Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid - make closed door presentations to IOC members at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.

Their complaint is that the present system does not give them a chance to make a proper study of a city's merits.

They get a hefty evaluation report, which many confess they do not properly read, followed by a presentation by the cities just before the vote. There have been all sorts of suggestions for reviving visits including escorted visits with IOC minders to prevent any possible chance of bribery.

The meeting in Lausanne is a compromise suggested by President Jacques Rogge, providing members a chance to hear from the bidding cities, have more time to reflect on their decision, but all of it above board with no possible chance of any skulduggery.

The members will only decide on their choice of city when they meet in a formal session in Copenhagen in October.

By then members will have the evaluation reports. Prepared by an IOC committee led by Nawal El Moutawakel, the reports were recently finalised. They have not yet been released but I understand that while all four cities get high marks, Rio may have most cause for satisfaction.

Rio has a strong emotional case - the Games have never been to Latin America. But the worry is security and I understand the report is believed to be reassuring on this.

America has not had the Games since Atlanta in 1996 and, with Chicago being Barrack Obama's home city, the conventional wisdom has been that Obama has only to appear in Copenhagen in October, with or without Michelle, and it is game over.

The Obama factor can never be underestimated but Chicago has two problems. Like all US Olympics, Chicago will be privately funded at a time when governments all over the world are funding almost everything else.

There is also still a tide of anti-Americanism in the IOC. In 2005 when New York bid against London, this tide was fuelled by the Iraq war, now it is the top slicing of television and commercial income the US Olympic Committee gets before any money is distributed to the rest of the Olympic world. This has led to angry debates, many meetings, but no resolution.

While Madrid and Tokyo have good bids, their problem is their location rather than what they say they will do. Madrid would mean three successive Games in Europe following on from 2012 in London and 2014 in Sochi. Tokyo would mean a return to East Asia for the summer Games only eight years after Beijing.

The feeling at the moment is 2016 is going west, Rio or Chicago.

Before the cities make their presentations, the IOC Executive Board will hear the case by seven sports which want to be part of the 2016 Games - softball, baseball, golf, rugby sevens, karate, squash and roller skating.

The Executive will not come to a decision until a further meeting in August - then they will choose the two sports for the IOC session in Copenhagen to approve.

IOC chiefs would like to see major sports in the Olympics. Golf, rugby sevens and baseball meet that criterion but baseball's problem is getting major league players to take part in the Games.

The IOC has been worried for sometime that the Games no longer have the same appeal for the young and it is felt that sports like golf and rugby sevens would attract this audience.

With 90 of the 107 members likely to be in Lausanne, it gives Britain's Sir Craig Reedie a chance to lobby his colleagues as he seeks to get on the executive board. Olympic convention demands that a host city should have a representative on the executive.

Reedie just failed to get elected in Beijing but he is well liked and Lausanne should prove the start of a successful campaign.

Pragmatism on the part of Manchester United, and populism on that of Real - though Madrid's plan will also be laced with hard-headed projections of the number of shirts Ronaldo and Kaka will be able to sell for the Spanish club.

Returning president Florentino Perez's search for new Galacticos is clearly driven by the desire to avenge the humiliation inflicted on Real by Barcelona this season, but the merchandising aspect should not be ignored.

Back in 2003, when another United Galactico Beckham went to the Bernabeu, Real earned US$600m in sale of shirts and other merchandising, increasing profits by 137% in the four seasons Beckham was there.

Beckham sold one million shirts in his first six months, at a time when Real was full of Galacticos like Zidane, Raul and the original Ronaldo.

"Even if Real sign one or two of the other stars, there would be a real focus on Ronaldo and Kaka's talents on the pitch, and also their brand off it. That will pay for the transfers many times over, even with the bumper salary package."

United have made it clear that this sale was done on the say-so of Sir Alex Ferguson. One of the remarkable features of the controversial Glazer takeover, one freely admitted by the United managmenet, is how liberated Ferguson now feels with the Americans in control.

Back in the 1980s when he arrived at United, he was surprised to be told by then-chairman Martin Edwards that United didn't have big money to spend on players. Ferguson always pushed against the restraints put on him by Edwards and the plc - he now finds the lines of authority in control exercised by the Americans much easier.

The Americans, having loaded the club with debt to finance their purchase, have run it with a cold, calculating search for increasing revenue that has rarely been seen in the British game.

Contrast the way they have handled this sale with the drama that preceded the sale of Beckham to Real six years ago.

Normally in a transfer, it is the buying club that trumpets it, with the selling club pretending the sale has not yet been done.

But today Madrid had a bank holiday, and have said very little, while United put out the announcement on their website as if they were getting rid of a subsidiary that had outlived its purpose.

It reflects the nature of the Glazer-run club. The Glazers will have driven a hard bargain with Madrid but what will be interesting to know is how the Madrid payment of £80m is structured.

Back in 1999, when Madrid bought Nicolas Anelka from Arsenal for £23m, the payment was staged over several years, and Arsenal had some problems getting all the money.

It is unlikely United will have cut Madrid much slack on this, and while Madrid will not have paid on the nail (only Roman Abramovich did that in his first year of ownership of Chelsea), the payment terms will have been tightly drawn.

Although United insist this was a footballing deal, not a commercial one, despite the heavy borrowing the Glazers have made, the money will surely come in very handy for them.

As for Real, we have been down this road of populism before with Perez. Whether it brings success on the field or not, the deals he is making do again illustrate what a unique club Real are.

They make their own television deals, something United cannot do, and being the club of Castillian Spain, they have the support of institutions, including those of the state, that United cannot call on. It is worth noting that while they also have huge debts, it is mostly from local banks, not international institutions as is the case of United.

There is no denying the huge gamble Perez has taken but that is inevitable in a members' club when a populist president returns and has to fulfil his manifesto commitments. Such a situation is inconceivable in Britain.

The fact is Sky's model was not laid out in blueprint at its Isleworth headquarters in west London but evolved over time, often more by accident than design and helped by a very special set of circumstances that are unlikely to recur.

Setanta was clearly riveted by the oft-repeated story that Premier League football rescued Sky. It did, but also recall that when Sky first started it never charged a fee for its sports channels. It only began demanding money once it had acquired the rights for the Premier League - and even then its initial charge was just £2 a month.

Sky's acquisition of Premier League rights was, like Wellington's description of the Battle of Waterloo, a "damn close-run thing". Had Tottenham, then one of the 'big five' clubs, still been run by Irving Scholar and not Sir Alan Sugar, ITV would have come out on top. That's because Scholar would almost certainly have sided with the four other major clubs - Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton - and voted for Greg Dyke's ITV. Instead, Sugar stood with Sky and decisively tipped the balance the other way.

Sky deserves great credit for the progress it has made, its growth at times surpassing that of the Premier League itself. But not all of its initial projections have worked. At that crucial rights meeting back in 1992, there was talk of making matches available through pay-per-view. But while we in Britain are happy to pay a monthly fee to a satellite broadcaster, we do not like taking our credit cards out for individual sports events. This is in stark contrast to America. Now nobody talks about armchair pay-per-view tickets for football in the UK.

Setanta must have felt the intervention of the European Commission, which forced the Premier League to have more than one holder of live rights, was divine. But the 46 live matches the broadcaster secured for the 2007/08 to 2009/10 seasons were never likely to dent Sky's portfolio. What's more, in bidding £392m, Setanta overpaid for its particular package. Sure, Sky was forced to pay a lot more to secure its own rights because of the threat posed by Setanta - and I know certain Setanta executives who dined out on that story - but it has proved a very pyrrhic victory.

By the time bidding for the next lot of Premier League rights packages (2010-2013) took place earlier this year, the market conditions had changed. Setanta ended up underbidding by 20% and lost half its rights. It has struggled ever since.

The change in market conditions has also meant that while the Premier League or Indian Premier League can still justify good money, other sports cannot. Setanta's mix of sporting fayre is wrong and, having chased a Sky formula which it thought could easily be copied, it is paying a heavy price, so much so that it may not survive another 48 hours.

Sky, I suspect, would quite like to keep Setanta on as a wholesaler for sports rights, a rival fatally weakened but useful to stop interventions from the likes of the European Commission.

Cricket's World Cups have often proved to be revolutionary, producing totally unexpected changes in the game.

So, back in 1979, Sri Lanka beating India in a World Cup match at Old Trafford led to Sri Lanka's admission as a Test nation. Similarly, Zimbabwe's case for Test status received a massive boost when in 1983 they famously beat Australia.

Perhaps the greatest cricket revolution triggered by the World Cup was India winning the tournament in 1983. Until then the Indians were supposed to be wedded to Test cricket. Every pundit was convinced that even if all five days produced tedious cricket, Indians would flock to the grounds. And Indian cricket administrators proudly boasted how one-day cricket was not for them.

For good measure when they hosted the World Cup in 1987 they also converted the 60-over tournament that England had invented into a 50-over format, making it the norm for the world.

And it was also at that World Cup that Australia's unexpected victory over England relaunched Australian cricket which had sunk to a dreadful low.

The revolution spawned by the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa is too recent to need retelling. Suffice to say the Indians at one stage did not even want to take part. Reluctantly they did, under a tyro captain and no major players. They won and the cricketing world was remade.

Compared to these examples I do not anticipate this summer's Twenty20 World Cup as producing any great revolutionary turmoil. We are living in a cricketing world remade by the Indian Premier League and India's power, something Giles Clarke, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, is well aware of.

What I do sense is we shall see two World Cups at least in terms of crowds. When countries from the subcontinent play, particularly India and Pakistan, it will be a bit like a football crowd in terms of passion. The other matches may all be sold out but they are unlikely to reproduce that cricketing tamasha that is the subcontinent's speciality.

The challenge for the game in this country is to combine the subcontinent's tamasha with the special fervour English cricket always reserves for the Ashes. If that can be done then, in a summer with no football or Olympic Games distraction, cricket could reclaim some of the enormous ground it has lost to football in recent years.

None of the other captains leading teams in the World Cup were tongue-tied. But Ashraful was and what is more at first it looked like a terrible snub to one of the minnows of world cricket.

The captains of all the 12 teams were summoned in groups on the stage to be asked questions by former England captain Nasser Hussain and television presenter Gabby Logan.

Ashraful could not have been in better company in a trio with Australia captain Ricky Ponting and South Africa captain Graeme Smith.

After Ponting and Smith had given their thoughts to Gabby, we waited for Ashraful to be quizzed. Instead she just thanked him for coming and he trooped off the stage.

The first thought was that while Australia and South Africa must fancy their chances of lifting the trophy, the Bangladesh captain, whose team cannot be expected to progress very far, was only there to stand and wait on the recognised powers of the game.

But later when I spoke to Gabby I discovered that there was no such snub. It was Ashraful, himself, who told Gabby he did not want to be asked any questions.

He gave no explanation why. I can only assume that in such a glittering company he felt he did not want to speak. That is a pity.

When you lead a team that few consider having a chance that is when you should stand up and assert who you are, not bombastically but in the witty way the Netherlands captain Jeroen Smits did.

Talking about his team, who play England in the opener on Friday, he said the Dutch would not look to defeat the hosts as they might not be invited back again to the headquarters of the game.

Of course Ashraful could not be expected to be as fluent as Paul Collingwood, who in my book gets the prize for the best story of the night.

Asked about his IPL experiences he described how he spoke to his Delhi team-mate Virender Sehwag. He expected grand tactical thoughts from Sehwag about how to play Twenty20. Collingwood was to be very surprised. The secret of Twenty20 cricket, according to Sehwag, was very simple: "Watch ball, hit ball."

Very similar to what old Father Fritz, back in my school days in St Xavier's in Bombay, told Sunil Gavaskar: "A good length ball you block, anything else you bang."

Gavaskar and Sehwag could not be more different in their approach to batting but it is comforting to know that the principles of sub-continental cricket have not changed in nearly half a century.

I suspect if you get more of this sub-continental weather and batting wickets to match then the Sehwag philosophy could become the batting norm of the World Cup.

And what a boost this will be and mark, one hopes, the launch of a glorious cricket season, all the more urgent given how non-existent the cricket summer has been so far.

The ambition of the Football Association and the British Olympic Association to have an Olympic football team in the summer of 2012 has never been in doubt.

The problem has been the fear of the Celtic nations, particularly the Scots, that it will put in jeopardy the unique privileged status that Britain has - one political nation but four footballing identities - and this fear is not entirely baseless.

There are some in international football who feel these privileges, agreed after the Second World War, when the British home countries came back to world football's governing body Fifa, are outdated and ought to be scrapped. Indeed, when the Fifa statutes were being rewritten not long ago another privilege of having a British vice-president of Fifa on the international board, was nearly lost.

But in football it has taken four years to get the deal because of the deep suspicion of some of the home countries that despite all the reassurances the FA has given, backed by Sepp Blatter President of Fifa (who even sent the Prime Minister a letter of reassurance), in the end Britain's enemies in Fifa will use this as a weapon to destroy its special position.

The whole issue has been further complicated by the rise of the nationalists to power in Scotland and their feeling that anything that dilutes Scotland's distinct status should be resisted. It is not surprising that news of the deal led to a member of the Scottish Parliament calling for the resignation of the Scottish FA chief executive Gordon Smith.

The deal still has some hoops to go through and requires approval by Fifa, the BOA and the International Olympic Committee and while these are administrative rather than fundamental the fact that the FA would not comment on the deal shows how sensitive the whole matter is felt to be.

However, the timing of the leak is of some significance. The Fifa congress meets in the Bahamas this weekend, the backyard of Jack Warner, the powerful vice-president from Trinidad. He has been the most vocal critic of having four British footballing nations.

The FA did not want to go to the congress without it being resolved.

Apart from demonstrating that like all host countries Britain too can take part in Olympic football it did not want the debate to drag on and cast a shadow over England's bid to host the 2018 tournament.

While the two are not directly connected this was a distraction that would do little to advance England's cause.

The congress comes just after the launch of the bid and the FA wants delegates to talk about what hosting a World Cup in Britain will mean to the world not about some old privileges that the British enjoy.

"Look down from the lift of this hotel", he said, "and there are amazing ruins everywhere."

How appropriate that, in this city where history barks at you, both United and Barcelona are seeking to make football history of their own.

But whatever the result, the most significant thing to emerge from Rome may be how comfortable United currently feel in their own skin at almost every level of the club.

While I was speaking to chief executive David Gill at the team hotel, the club's American owners, the Glazer brothers, mingled in the foyer with not a hint of trouble.

Hard to imagine that four years ago, they had to be virtually smuggled out of Old Trafford and many fans deserted the club in protest.

Gill, who himself opposed the takeover, now sees the Glazers as central to lifting United from the 'nadir' (his word) of the protests and relative lack of success the club was going through in 2005.

He argues they have liberated Sir Alex Ferguson, who now operates under a much simpler decision-making process, that they manage the finances very well, and there is no pressure from the stock market to pay dividends.

Of course there is debt, but Gill doesn't see it as unmanageable or as giving the club an unfair advantage. Rome's Olympic stadium is financed by the local government, French local authorities and governments put money into football - so why can't owners borrow heavily to finance their ownership of clubs?

Ferguson clearly relishes the set-up at the club under the Glazers' ownership. But just as significant is that the club appears not to be overly worried about the great question of what happens when Ferguson finally does bow out.

It took United a generation to recover from the departure of Sir Matt Busby and United's rivals have long hoped that Ferguson's departure will provide them a two or three-year window to catch up with them.

But Sir Alex has again recently quashed any imminent retirement talk.

And given how well the club appears to have managed the transition to foreign ownership, those at the top of the Old Trafford tree give every indication they are also in good shape to manage the even more challenging transition of life after Fergie.

Yet there had been no lack of atmosphere at the all-Spanish final in Glasgow two years ago and perhaps too much of it in Manchester last year when Rangers took on Zenit St Petersburg. I doubt if the build-up in Istanbul would have been so lacklustre had, say, Manchester City got through. A bully point for those who speak of the special passion the British bring to football, unmatched by any other country.

Reading the English media, it would be hard to avoid the conclusion that the Europa League will be the greatest unwanted European football tournament of all time. Yet such a view would not only be Anglo-centric but counter-productive. Both this season's Uefa Cup final in Turkey and the forthcoming Europa League are important events.

Here's why:

Staging the Uefa Cup final in Istanbul - the second European final to be staged in this city in four years, although Wednesday's game did not compare to the dramatic night in 2005 when Liverpool did the impossible - was significant for Turkey because it touched a core part of the its national aspiration.

As the writer Soner Cagaptay put it in Hurriyet Daily News here: "For decades secular Turks put Turkey through painful tests to prove the country's Europeanness. For instance, Turkish soccer teams joined European competitions losing miserably to powerful European teams. The Turks could have competed against the less professional Middle Eastern teams in Asian competitions, but this would have meant that Turkey was not European... The euphoria one witnesses every time Turkey wins a European championship is really joy over the validation of Turkey's European identity."

This latest final was held in the Asian part of Istanbul, the stadium here being better suited to a big match than the one in the European part of the city where Liverpool performed their miracle. And as one Turkish football official put it, that was significant because it represented yet another Turkish step on the road to becoming part of the European Union. It also, they hope, enhanced their bid to stage the European Championships in 2016.

Similarly, the Europa League is part of Uefa's long struggle to reconstruct European football in the wake of the success of the Champions League.

I have much sympathy for football romantics who argue that it would be nice if we could go back to three European competitions; a European Cup just for champions, the Cup Winners' Cup - in which British teams always did so well - and the Uefa Cup for those not quite able to be champions of their leagues. But that is a bit like my profession calling for a return to the days when we filed our copy via telegrams or telex. It just cannot happen.

The Champions League is the midweek European league the big clubs have always wanted. It was their threat to decamp and form their own league in 1998 which led to the big leagues of England, Italy and Spain securing four teams in the competition.

It has not been easy for Uefa to come up with a format that works. While the Europa League will now have some of the features of the Champions League - centralised television and marketing deals, for example, plus more television income (150 million euros from next year) - Uefa accepts this competition will always be the little sister.

The kick-off times for Europa League matches - the first at 1815 British time followed by a second at 2005 on Thursday nights - shows just how difficult it is to find a window for this competition. The other major consideration for Uefa is ensuring that the new league caters to the great mass of European clubs who can only experience the Champions League through a television set.

I realise that all this will cut little ice with English critics. But what always puzzles me is how we in England can be so egalitarian at home and so elitist abroad. The FA Cup is the ultimate egalitarian competition. A non-league side can aspire to win the Cup and, as Tottenham proved in 1901, go on to realise their dream. However much we may want it, such a European competition is impossible.

The Europa League is not ideal, but it provides something for the many who will never be part of the elite.