Shortly before Christmas two years ago, a letter landed on the desk of our then Minister of Culture, Mrs. Elsebeth Nielsen. It was no Christmas Card.

The Football Association's new chief executive Adam Crozier rocked the old order shortly after taking over in January, by daring to appear in public with neither a tie nor even a blazer, which have been standard FA issue for decades. Last weekend the former Saatchi & Saatchi chief executive stretched this new dawn close to revolution, startling the football world by presenting the unthinkable: a plan for the FA.

The IOC wants to use the Olympic games in Sydney to rehabilitate Olympic doping control. A timely decision and professor John Hoberman argues that the Sydney Games are one of our last opportunities to prevent the further transformation of sport into a high-performance freak show.

Relationships between sport and money are longstanding and necessary: this cannot be concealed in the light of a Coubertanian ideal that is often poorly understood.

The Van Nistelrooy affair, as it can now be called, has allowed choice glimpses into Manchester United plc's rancorous internal politics, and provided a glorious modern football moment, in the shape of United's lawyer and finance director addressing the nation, po-faced about the 23 year old Dutchman's knee.

One of English footballs greatest ironies is the extent to which the fortunes of the top clubs, and their chairmen, have been founded on the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster. The Taylor Report which followed recommended, that public money, via 160m grants from the Football Trust, should help fund the compulsory seating of grounds, and it has led to the enrichment of many of the same people.

Sport is fascinating - but not innocent. As a mirror of societal oppositions, sport is full of tensions.

The coexistence of sport and politics dates from the 9th century BC, when the institution of the truce, or "Ekecheiria", was established in Ancient Greece by the signing of an "international" treaty by three kings: Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta.