Which team do you support and why?

For my sins, I support Spurs. It's a family inheritance from my father and grandfather. To make matters worse I came of football age in the early seventies when Spurs were having a good spell.

Do you think that George Best was better than Pele or Maradona?

No. He was an extraordinary player with elegance, grace and a perfect touch, but you just have to do it at the very highest level under the greatest pressure, to be as good as Pele and Maradonna. The Northern Irish national team does not (I am afraid) appear at the highest level too often.

Should Rangers & Celtic be allowed to play in the English First Division so they can progress into the Premier League?

No. I am enough of a traditionalist to think that in football amongst other things, Scotland and England are two different nations or entities.

How many gay footballers do you know of?

Just Justin Fashnu. It's true that football does not posses a very sympathetic culture.

What is your view on a European Super League, or is the Champions League heading that way anyway?

UEFA have just announced that the second group stage of the Champions league will become a two-leg knock out round in 2003, so that's a step back from the league format of the competition. I think it's probably a good thing. Football inevitably tends towards a concentration and centralisation of power, wealth and talent and a formal European league would accelerate that process even further. Keeping domestic football as the centre of football's rhythm is a break on that.

Is it true managers ban sex before games? Would this really wear out a top athlete?

They do. It's a line supposedly introduced by the Argentinean manager Helenio Herrara, who when coaching in Italy and Spain would seclude his players at a hotel or retreat before matches. Would it wear them out? Ecuador's coach at the World Cup, Dario Gomez argued that it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it, that counts!

Finally, who would be in your dream team?

Most people's dream team is made up of great players. I think it's time to give the cast of minor supporting characters a turn in a dream team; corrupt administrators, monarchical owners, schemers, dealers and pantomime villains of all kinds.

In goal, it would have to be Rupert Murdoch. The defence would have to be built around the Kaiser, Franz Beckenbauer, surely the most all round footballer ever. As national coach, President of Bayern Munich and head of the German World Cup operations for 2006. A place would have to be found for boss of the Stasi and effective boss of the company team - Dynamo Berlin; all those last minute penalties and winners would come in very handy. Michel Platini is cut from the same cloth as Beckenbauer and with a world cup hosting under his belt he's looking good for the UEFA presidency a few years down the line. But to really stiffen the line, the man who led the Turkish revolution and the choruses on the Fenerbahce terraces - Kemal Attaturk - has got to take a place.

In central midfield I would put an old partnership back together. The pay maker, the maestro, the puppet master extraordinaire must be Joao Havalange, Brazilian president of FIFA from 1974 to 1998 and the man who put coca-colas money and geopolitics into football. The workhorse alongside him, pushing the deals through and protecting his master - Sepp Blatter, Havalange's General secretary for years and now his successor. The wings are harder to pick, but for pace and flair in building a football empire you have to think about Santiago Bernebau at Real Madrid and Silvio Berlusconi at Milan. As his occupation of the Italian presidency probably rules him out, I might go with a difficult and unpredictable maverick, who doesn't know when he's beaten, imprisoned or banned… Jesus Gil y Gil at Atletico Madrid and Bernard Tapie at Marseilles spring to mind.

Up front I am looking for dastardly innovation and disregard…a real creativity in disdain for fans and the game. Step forward Eurico Miranda, boss at Rio Di Janeiro's Vasco da Gama and Brazilian Senator: as ambulances fought their way onto the clubs ground at the final of the Brazilian national championship (trying to rescue fans crushed in an overcrowded stand) Miranda was on the field insisting play restart while Vasco remained ahead. Alongside him Massimo Moratti, owner of Internazionale, who has thrown more money at the problem of winning than anyone else; though I hear there's a young lad at Fulham with similar talents and pockets.