If you were a neutral soccer fan, there was nowhere better to be than London this week.

The capital might well battle with all the problems inherent in big cities: it’s expensive, there are too many people, too many cars — but for the football fan there are few places to match it.

If you had the time, the money, the inclination and the stamina, you could have watched Champions League matches and a UEFA Cup game at Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs on three successive nights.

You would have seen a total of 12 goals.

You’d have witnessed an outstanding display by Arsenal in their 3-0 demolition of Sevilla in their Champions League opener at the Emirates and a revitalised Spurs team demolish Anorthosis Famagusta of Cyprus 6-1 at White Hart Lane.

You wouldn’t have seen a great match at Chelsea, who drew 1-1 with Rosenborg Trondheim in their Champions League opener, but at least you would have been witness to the final drama that brought the curtain down on Jose Mourinho’s time at the club.

If you didn’t fancy going to see Chelsea on Tuesday — and clearly with 17,000 empty seats at the Bridge not too many did — you had a choice of watching Charlton Athletic, Crystal Palace or Queens Park Rangers in the Championship.

The numbers speak for themselves. Although Chelsea had a disappointingly low crowd of just 25,000 at Stamford Bridge, almost 75,000 spectators watched the four matches in the capital on Tuesday.

On Wednesday there was a near-capacity crowd of 60,000 at the Emirates while on Thursday, Spurs had a near-capacity crowd of almost 36,000 for their game at the Lane.

Last week England’s two Euro 2008 qualifiers at Wembley attracted two 90,000 sell-out crowds.

Organised soccer, of course, began in London in October 1863 when the Football Association was formed in a pub in Lincoln’s Inn Fields near Covent Garden.

With a total of 14 League clubs including five in the Premier League, the city remains one of Europe’s most vibrant soccer cities.

Ironical then, perhaps, that no London team has ever won the European Cup or Champions League.

Judging by the events of this week, Arsenal have a far more realistic chance of doing that than Chelsea. What an even more amazing irony it would be if they won this season’s final in Moscow, the old home of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich whose billions have not yet brought him the Chelsea success he craves the most.

Mike Collett, Reuters Soccer Correspondent, London

Steve McClaren has not had the easiest of starts as England’s head coach and it is no exaggeration to say that he was facing a somewhat uncertain future before his team’s back-to-back qualifiers against Israel and Russia at Wembley Stadium.

England went in to the game against Israel last Saturday with a sorry record of just two wins in their previous nine games. A defeat at home to either Israel or Russia or both and McClaren might well have been ringing around to see what jobs could be on offer if he needed one.

It was not looking too clever for him either. Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney, David Beckham, Owen Hargreaves and Gary Neville were all out with injuries while Peter Crouch was suspended for the Israel game.

It was time for McClaren to gamble and he came up trumps.

In came the under-rated Gareth Barry to play alongside Steven Gerrard in midfield. Emile Heskey was beckoned from the international wilderness for the first time in three years. Shaun Wright-Phillips was told to start playing for England the same way he has started the season at Chelsea.

It was an unfamiliar concoction — but the ingredients came together. For the first time in a long time England played as a team.

Unlikely partnerships flourished all over the field: Heskey and Michael Owen in attack, Wright-Phillips and Micah Richards on the right; Barry and Gerrard in the midfield.

England won both games 3-0 to rekindle their Euro 2008 hopes and keep McClaren’s job safe for now.

The circumstances of how he has managed to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear recall Bobby Robson’s England of Italia ‘90 when injuries appeared to blight their hopes of progress.

Skipper Bryan Robson, defender Gary Stevens and forward John Barnes all started the opening match against Ireland, but none of them remained when England went out on penalties to West Germany in the semi-final three weeks later.

Robson was forced to change his team because of circumstances beyond his control and he almost took England to the World Cup final.

McClaren similarly had to juggle his side in ways he couldn’t have imagined two weeks ago. He admits he has no idea why Heskey worked so well with Owen, for example. “It was just a hunch,” he said. “These things happen. You can’t explain them.”

It might have been luck, or perhaps he’s being modest and he had an insight into the players no-one else saw. As Gary Player once said of his golfing success: “It’s a funny thing, the more I practise, the luckier I get.”

McClaren certainly got lucky this week. All England have to do now is keep practising.

Mike Collett, London

David Beckham’s fervent ambition to become only the fifth English player to win 100 caps for his country is in grave danger after the way Shaun Wright-Phillips played against Israel on Saturday.

Beckham, who returned to the England side this season, now has 97 caps.

But he cannot add to that tally until his latest injury heals up and so has to endure a frustrating wait until he gets the chance to join England’s quartet of centurions: Peter Shilton (125 caps), Bobby Moore (108), Bobby Charlton (106) and Billy Wright (105).

However, he might not get that chance at all.

For his replacement Wright-Phillips, a bustling bundle of energy down the right, brought a new dimension of exhilarating attacking “nous” to the England side, scored a superbly taken opening goal and was named man of the match.

Wright-Phillips has also been playing well for Chelsea this season, and will almost certainly keep his place for the Group E qualifier against Russia at Wembley on Wednesday. He will be doing all he can against tougher opposition to make it impossible for coach Steve McClaren to drop him when Beckham returns to fitness.

But there is more to it than just Wright-Phillips’s form. He was brilliantly supported on Saturday by his old Manchester City club mate Micah Richards, who played behind him down the right flank as an attacking, overlapping full back.

While Wright-Phillips, 25, scored his second goal for England on his 14th appearance, Richards, just 19, scored his first in only his sixth game with a towering unmarked header from a corner.

If Richards has another good game against Russia then Gary Neville, who, like Beckham is now aged 32 and injured, will also struggle to add to his 85 caps when he’s fit again.

There were other unexpected pluses too: Gareth Barry had a fine game in midfield in place of the injured Frank Lampard. The recalled Emile Heskey was excellent up front alongside Michael Owen in place of the suspended Peter Crouch and injured Wayne Rooney.

One good game against a team as poor as Israel were on Saturday does not make an international career or end one but it can certainly herald the future.

Beckham, and his old Manchester United team mate Neville, must be hoping the future has not already arrived — with their places going to men with past and present links to Manchester City of all clubs.

Mike Collett, London

When Trevor Brooking, one of the most diplomatic of men, says English soccer has a major problem because of the influx of foreign players, the time has come for action.

The trouble is there’s precious little action that can actually be taken to improve the situation Brooking, the English FA’s director of development, is so concerned about.

Since the 1995 Bosman Ruling and subsequent changes to EU law brought down the barriers on cross-border employment, and TV money made the English game the richest in the world, it seems every decent or even half-decent player has tried to earn himself a considerable crust in England.

The impact of this has been obvious for years: imported talent naturally makes it even harder for local youngsters to reach the highest level. The very best always will, but clubs increasingly go out and buy the finished article from overseas rather than wait for their youngsters to mature.

In England, Chelsea and Arsenal in particular have fielded teams that did not include one English player. That is now nothing new. What is new, though, is that because the top teams are fielding fewer and fewer English players, the pool of elite talent from which the national team is selected is diminishing.

As Brooking says, “Its a major concern. In 10 years time you dont want us just being pleased to qualify for tournaments.

England are a long way from securing their place at Euro 2008 and must beat Israel and Russia at Wembley in the next eight days to keep their chances alive. But even if they do win and eventually reach the finals, the problem will continue.

The only answer is for clubs to abandon their search for foreign stars and start developing their own who actually come through and regularly play for the first team of their club. In
England that hasn’t happened since Manchester United — and subsequently England — profited from the likes of David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Gary and Philip Neville in the mid-1990s.

Don’t hold your breath. It’s unlikely to happen again soon.

Mike Collett, London

The British are not passionate about cycling yet it says something about their love of great sporting events that an estimated four million people turned out to watch the prologue and first stage of the Tour de France in London and Kent at the weekend.

Most of those people, it is fair to assume, wouldn’t have known a casquette (old fashioned cotton cycling cap) from a contre-la-montre (time trial) or a grimpeur (thin mountain specialist) from a rouleur (an all-rounder) — but that didn’t stop them enjoying the dazzling spectacle.

Being among the crowd, one could, without a massive leap of imagination, project one’s thoughts forwards five years to the London Olympics and imagine quite clearly just how much Britons are going to enjoy the 2012 Games. Britain, after all, invented or helped codify a number of sports in the 19th century, not least soccer — the global game.

We rarely talk about British soccer because England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have their own national teams and their own domestic leagues.

The only place where Britain traditionally competed as a unified team was in the Olympic Games — but that hasn’t happened since 1972 when Britain were eliminated in the qualifiers for the Munich Games.

Three weeks ago Britain qualified for next year’s Olympic Games soccer finals in Beijing when the England side reached the semi-finals of the European Under-21 championship in the Netherlands.

But Britain will be missing from those Games because the Scots and the Welsh fear for their senior international identities if they allow their players in a British team.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has told them they have nothing to worry about — their status is safe and enshrined in FIFA’s statutes. Still they won’t budge and Italy will be playing in the 2008 Games instead.

The IOC and FIFA have insisted that Britain, as hosts, take part in the 2012 Games — and do not care if the team is made up of 11 Englishmen or 11 Irishmen.

Britain could have taken part next year too but an insular view, rather than the international outlook that hit the streets at the weekend, has ruined that prospect.

Mike Collett is Reuters Soccer Editor

The only way Manchester United were going to take the title away from Jose Mourinho and his consistently resolute and formidable Chelsea side was by playing brilliant football game after game, week after week, month after month from August to May.

And that, apart from the occasional blip here and the odd stumble there, is exactly what they have done to win their ninth championship title under manager Alex Ferguson, the greatest one of the lot.

This success truly is a special one because United, who were last champions in 2003, had to discover their own self-belief all over again and keep the psychological pressure on Chelsea while winning matches week in and week out.

They started the season brilliantly with a 5-1 home win over Fulham, won their first four games with a goal tally of 11-2 and apart from two weeks in September, were top all season long.

Their counter-attacking football was glorious to watch. Ryan Giggs, winning an all-time record ninth championship medal, was gloriously re-born, as was the fit-again Paul Scholes. Cristiano Ronaldo was a revelation, Wayne Rooney consistent.

Ferguson, who says he cannot believe he is 65 years old, has steered United to heroic triumphs before, not least when they overhauled Newcastle’s 12-point advantage in 1997 and beat Arsenal by a point in their treble-winning year of 1999.

This title is the greatest of all, because it simply wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did.

On Wednesday the Special One will see his team run out at Stamford Bridge. As champions. Jose Mourinho will be among those applauding Ferguson’s latest triumph.

Mike Collett is Reuters soccer editor

While the Premier League boasts some of the world’s greatest players, displaying their superlative skills in state-of-the-art stadiums, the really dramatic title chase in England this season has been elsewhere.

The Premier League has been a two-horse race all season between Manchester United and Chelsea, while Liverpool and Arsenal have been either third or fourth since December. In fact, only seven clubs have finished in the top four of the Premier League over the last 11 seasons — this season’s top quartet plus Newcastle United, Everton and Leeds United.

That predictability is nowhere to be found in Division Two — currently known as the Coca-Cola Championship, but still the Second Division to the purists.

Cardiff City, Preston North End, Derby County, Sunderland, and Birmingham City have all led the league at some stage — while Leeds, English champions in 1969 and 1974, European Cup runners-up in 1975 and Champions League semi-finalists in 2001, are about to be relegated to the third division for the first time in their history, along with Southend United and Luton Town.

Sunderland, who came down last year, began the season with four straight league defeats and looked to be heading for the third division themselves. Then Roy Keane took over as manager, guided them to an unbeaten 17-match unbeaten run earlier this year, restored their pride and this weekend saw their Premier League status restored with automatic promotion.

The difference between the Premier League and the Second Division is that there are so many genuinely big clubs who are real contenders for honours.

The likely playoff quartet: Derby County, West Bromwich Albion, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Southampton, have all recently been in the Premier League. Clubs like Sheffield Wednesday, Crystal Palace, Ipswich Town, Stoke City, Norwich City, Leicester City, Coventry City and Queens Park Rangers regularly attract crowds of over 20,000 in generally superb stadiums that would be a credit to most other top divisions anywhere in Europe.

It might not be the elite division, but in almost every other way it’s first class. The tickets are cheaper too.

Mike Collett is Reuters soccer editor, based in London

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The most astonishing soccer story of the week is not the revelation that Jose Mourinho was once smuggled out of Stamford Bridge in a laundry skip to avoid UEFA officials or even that Queen Elizabeth II is a lifelong fan of Arsenal.

Far more bizarrely comes news from Zagreb that Croatia and Hungary are planning to ask UEFA for compensation to cover the cost of their failed bid to host Euro 2012.

The joint bid received “nul points” from UEFA’s executive committee. The winning bid from Poland and Ukraine received eight of the 12 votes, while Italy got the other four.

The Croats are saying that the two million euros “could have been directed to other important soccer projects.” Perhaps they could have thought of that in the first place. Because if UEFA gives them even a single cent back, wouldn’t every football fan feel justified in going back to get the cost of the ticket refunded every time their team lose?

Or perhaps every club could ask for their 20 million pounds, euros or dollars back if their star forward fails to score the 25 goals they expected him to score when they bought him.

The fans of relegated clubs could go one further and ask for compensation for the mental anguish of seeing their side go down, or to help them cope with the teasing by their work or school mates over their team’s failures.

Hungary and Croatia entered a football competition and lost. Is asking for their money back really a sporting gesture?

Mike Collett is Reuters soccer editor

Bill Shankly used to joke that the best two teams on Merseyside were Liverpool …. and Liverpool Reserves.

Now current coach Rafael Benitez is proposing that Liverpool Reserves actually start playing in the League in their own right.

Its not a new idea. Jose Mourinho said much the same in December and both men agree that the progress of young players is being stymied because they are playing what they see as meaningless, uninspiring matches in the reserve leagues.

The warning is that England will not develop international class players in future unless their reserves get greater competitive exposure in the lower divisions.

What Benitez would like to see is his reserve side play perhaps in the Championship, League One or League Two in proper competitive conditions based on the Spanish model. As in Spain, even if they won promotion to the top flight they wouldn’t actually go up.

The suggestion from Benitez is unlikely to be taken up in England, where there has already been negative reaction, but the idea is not without merits.

In France, reserve teams play in the amateur fourth division (CFA) where they gain good competitive experience. Nantes developed Marcel Desailly, Didier Deschamps and Christian Karembeu, all part of the 1998 World Cup winning squad, through their reserve team and have long been the best team in CFA.

Exciting young players from Germany like Mario Gomez, came up playing in the tough regional third division, in his case for VfB Stuttgart II, rather than in reserve games. The system means that when, say, Bayern Munich have injury problems they can call up players from the B team with regular match experience in a league where there is a great deal at stake.

So should the English league follow suit? Or do we meddle with the structure as it is at our peril? We’d like to hear your views.

Mike Collett is Reuters Soccer Editor

Imagine this: It’s ten past nine on a cold, wintry night in December and you’re frozen to the bone watching Rochdale and Accrington Stanley battle to a goalless draw at Spotland in an English fourth division match.

There are two minutes to go and you and your mates cannot wait for the match to end because a draw is a fair result and the pub is beckoning.

There are no goals but it’s been a good game and all you want to do is go for a swift drink, before your ice-bitten fingers fall off, and get home on the bus.

 Finally the match ends 0-0, but you are not going anywhere.

Under the new rules of the competition, the Football League, who have already renamed the fourth division League Two to pretend it’s actually the second division and not the fourth, now require a penalty shoot-out to decide the winners on the night.

Almost 120 years of fine sporting tradition ended when the wise men of the League voted to bring in this idea in the summer of 2007.

They did this, they explained, to “refresh their product” in the words of the League chairman Brian Mawhinney.

So you and your mate decide to stay and watch the penalties.

Suddenly, everyone who couldn’t score starts to find the net. Every penalty goes in: 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2, 3-2, 3-3… 16-15, 16-16, 17-16, 17-17, 18-17, 18-18… 39-38, 39-39,
40-39, 40-40… you look at your watch: it’s going to be midnight at this rate before they settle this.

The pub will be shut, the last bus long gone, leaving you with a four-mile walk home in the dark, cold Lancashire night.

But still no-one misses. Its now 118-118 and it’s 3 o’clock in the morning.

Finally, finally, someone misses… the ball goes wide. Accrington have beaten Rochdale 161-160 on penalties. It’s six o’clock in the morning and you’re about to die of hypothermia.

But you simply couldn’t walk away could you? You had to stay to the finish because you are a real fan.

The Football League is only considering the idea at this stage. Perhaps it should make a final decision standing on the terraces at Rochdale one night next December.

Mike Collett is Reuters Soccer Editor