The availability of more and more football matches on live TV has been a benefit to a lot of players, allowing them to showcase their best moments to a wider audience more often.
However, it has also harmed a certain type of footballer: The maverick, whose best moments are up there with the best of anyone else in the game, but who hasn’t always been able to deliver them with regularity.
Hatem Ben Arfa might well have been one of the best-regarded players in the world if his peak had come in the 90s, when all most of us saw of players on the continent was the odd Champions League game in midweek and the occasional weekend highlights show.
