I was standing by the side of the M1 in front of my broken-down Morris 1100 on a hot afternoon in May 1972 with only one thought in my mind. And it wasn’t how to get my car fixed.

It was how was I going to get to Molineux, still 75 miles away, for the first leg of the UEFA Cup final between Wolves and Spurs.

Luckily my companion knew a lot more about cars than I did and after a nervous wait, we were on our way again to an historic first — the first European club cup final between two English teams.

For in all the hype surrounding this week’s all-English Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea, that first all-English European final has largely been over-looked.

That is no real surprise in today’s world of mega-Champions League hype, but what IS more of a surprise is that there has been no all-English final in any other European club competition since then.

Eventually we made it to Molineux in good time for the first leg of the very first UEFA Cup final which Spurs went on to win 3-2 on aggregate.

Martin Chivers was the hero at Molineux, scoring both goals in Tottenham’s 2-1 win, including a memorable 30-metre thump that almost broke the back of the Wolves net.

Alan Mullery was the Spurs hero in the second leg, knocking himself out as he scored the goal that secured the cup with a 1-1 draw in his final match for the club.

Both Wolves and Spurs occupy a special place in the annals of European club soccer and in a sense the wheel has turned full circle from Molineux to Moscow this week.

In the mid-1950s Wolves were declared “Champions of the World” by the English media after victories over top European sides in floodlit friendlies which included a 4-0 win over Spartak Moscow in November 1954.

That was the catalyst Gabriel Hanot, the editor of L’Equipe, needed to finally act on an idea that had been building for some time: to create a continental cup to find the real champions of Europe. The European Cup was born.

Wolves never won the European Cup and neither did Spurs, but Spurs did become the first English team to win a European trophy when they beat Atletico Madrid 5-1 in the European Cup Winners Cup final in 1963.

English clubs, along with those from Spain, Italy and Germany have gone on to dominate European club soccer over the last four decades and now England have shared the third same-country final following Spain in 2000 and Italy in 2003.

One thing’s for sure though. If you’d have broken down in your Austin 1100 on the M1 on the way to see Chelsea v Manchester United, I’m pretty certain you wouldn’t have made it to Moscow in time for the kickoff this week.

Mike Collett, Moscow

PHOTO: A worker adjusts an outsized Champions League football in front of the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, May 20, 2008. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

Scenes of riot police and bottle-throwing fans marred Wednesday’s UEFA Cup final in Manchester between Rangers and Zenit St Petersburg, who won 2-0. A Russian fan was also stabbed.

While police said it was only a small minority of supporters causing trouble, the sight of British football fans making headlines for the wrong reasons comes at just the wrong time – less than a week before tens of thousands of Chelsea and Manchester United followers head to Moscow for the Champions League final.

Should the Russian police be worrying about what might hit their capital city next week?

It seemed that Wednesday’s incidents were largely down to the breakdown of one of the big television screens in a fan park, so perhaps there is little to worry about.

Because of the visa issues and the expense of getting there, there are unlikely to be as many ticketless fans out on the streets in Moscow as there were in Manchester, but then again mix Russian vodka with those few trouble-seeking fans and things could turn nasty.

What do you think?    

The UEFA Cup final has thrown together two teams of contrasting styles, pitting free-scoring Russian champions Zenit St Petersburg , managed by Dutchman Dick Advocaat, against a defensively-solid Rangers team guided by Walter Smith.

Will that combination produce yet another classic at the showpiece at the City of Manchester stadium?

The last 10 finals since 1998 have been largely high-scoring affairs - averaging 3.9 goals per match. Who could forget Liverpool’s epic 5-4 win over Alaves, secured with a golden goal in 2001, or Porto’s 3-2 victory over Celtic two years later.

Zenit, even without suspended top scorer Pavel Pogrebynak for the final, have the potential to test the best club defences.

In 16 European games the Russians  have rammed in 29 goals, an impressive tally not lost on Smith, who believes Zenit would have more than held their own had they played Champions League football this season.

Zenit will play in Europe’s premier club competition next season, reward for winning the Russian title, but Advocaat must first hatch a plan to overcome a club he knows inside out having guided Rangers to two league titles between 1998 and 2002.

Rangers have found goals hard to come by since parachuting into the UEFA Cup from the Champions League, but with Spaniard Carlos Cuellar, named Scottish Football Writers’ Player of the Year, a rock at the back they do not concede many either.

The thousands of Rangers fans expected to pack the City of Manchester stadium won’t give a hoot if the Ibrox side repeat their semi-final penalty shootout win over Fiorentina when both sides cancelled each other out and failed to come up with a goal over a turgid two legs.

The omens for goals are not good though - the only previous European final held in Manchester - the 2002-03 Champions League decider between Juventus and AC Milan at Old Trafford - finished scoreless after 120 minutes.

PHOTO: Media crews film the UEFA cup at a news conference at the City of Manchester stadium in Manchester, northern England May 13, 2008. REUTERS/Michael Dalder

Manchester City fans have always had a good line in terrace songs and their latest offering is “Hey Thaksin, Leave Our Sven Alone” to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”.      

They may still be singing about Eriksson in Europe next season, if Richard Dunne’s final day red card in the 8-1 humiliation at Middlesbrough doesn’t scupper an unlikely route into the UEFA Cup via the wacky Fair Play League.  

City are a less than angelic fifth in the Premier League’s Fair Play stats but the teams above them will all be in Europe anyway. To make matters worse, the system is not even as simple as red and yellow cards or fouls committed. At least that criteria would be black and white.

Instead, Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers, who finished higher than City, have missed out on the UEFA Cup because they did not tick enough boxes for things like “respect towards opponents” and “positive play”.

City’s hapless defenders would receive glowing references from Middlesbrough’s forwards on the first point.      

Positive play? Well, they definitely can’t be accused of playing for a 0-0….so more credit there then.      

Maybe football should scrap the three points for a win system and just have two teams of show ponies prancing about the pitch while a panel of judges marks them for artistic merit and choreography…It would make more sense than the Fair Play charts.

Martyn Herman, London

Luca Toni has evidently not learned much German in the eight months since he moved over the Alps a few hundred kilometres north of native Italy to the Bavarian capital of Munich.

With plenty of translators at his service and a wide range  of fine Italian restaurants in Munich to pick from, there’s little need to spend time studying the difficult tongue-twisting language of Goethe and Schiller. His interviews in the German media are invariably translated from Italian.

But Bayern Munich coach Ottmar Hitzfeld revealed on Sunday that Toni has in the meantime enriched his vocabulary with at least one German term - Tor (goal).

“I asked him at half-time if he wanted to play the whole match or come off and he just said ‘Tor, Tor, Tor’,” Hitzfeld said after Toni had scored twice in the first half against Dortmund, by which time they were leading 4-0.

Toni, who came to Bayern from Fiorentina in the close-season, has proven that you don’t need to speak fluent German to understand what keeps your German employers happy. That one three-letter word “Tor” is enough.

He has 31 goals in all competitions and leads the Bundesliga in scoring with 18 goals with six matches left.

Even though he didn’t score a third goal against Dortmund (the match finished 5-0, but it was Andreas Ottl who got the fifth), Toni ended up playing the full 90 minutes on Sunday just three days after going 120 minutes (and scoring twice in the last five) in Bayern’s epic UEFA Cup tie at Getafe.

But it’s not only his goal-scoring that makes Toni such a watchable player.

“Even when his shots miss, the anguish on Toni’s face and the gesticulations with his hands are so expressive and so much fun to watch,” said one commentator on Premiere Television.

PHOTO: Toni scores his first goal against Dortmund during their Bundesliga match in Munich, April 13, 2008. REUTERS/Alexandra Beier

Despite seeing literally hundreds of games over the course of a season, there is the occasional match you know will stick with you forever and Thursday’s UEFA Cup quarter-final between Getafe and Bayern Munich was one of them.

It was the second Spanish-German clash I’d been to this week, having gone to the Nou Camp for the Barcelona-Schalke Champions League match the night before, but in terms of pure emotion and excitement there was absolutely no comparison. No excuses for resorting to an overused cliché because this time it is no exaggeration - this one was a real rollercoaster of a Cup tie.

From the first whistle to the last it was non-stop action and as a journalist it was one of those games where you feel like telephoning in your resignation at halftime because you don’t want to miss any of it while typing your match report which, by the way, I had to rewrite about five times.

There was something in the air that made you know it was going to be a classic and when Bayern had a goal ruled out for offside in the first minute my feelings were confirmed. Getafe had their top player Ruben de la Red sent off after six minutes and lost their most dangerous striker Ikechukwu Uche before the 20th.

But the setbacks and the deafening support of the 16,000 fans crammed into the Coliseum only served to inspire them. Cosmin Contra, the hero of the first leg with his last-minute equaliser and a veteran of Alaves’s fairytale run to the UEFA Cup final in 2001, struck a brilliant solo goal to give Getafe a deserved lead just before halftime.

But I knew it wasn’t going to be a simple giantkilling win when Getafe substitute Braulio sped clear midway through the second half, rounded Oliver Kahn and then slipped over as he was preparing to slot the ball into the empty net. True enough, in practically their only attack of the second half, Bayern equalised with just over a minute to go.

Usually you expect the smaller side to hang on for grim death in extra time and eventually fold against their more illustrious opponents or hope for penalties. But Getafe might just have been listening to my colleague Mark Elkington, who was sitting beside me commenting: “Oh dear, you don’t want to go for penalties against the Germans.”

Two quickfire goals from Javi Casquero and Braulio sent the crowd into delirium and Getafe on the way to a famous victory…except of course the dream never came true.

With five minutes to go Luca Toni pulled one back after Getafe goalkeeper Pato Abbondanzieri fumbled a simple cross and rolled it into his path.

As the crowd nervously began the countdown to the final whistle, Bayern keeper Oliver Kahn charged up into the opposition area and eventually Toni headed in. Total silence… even the Bayern fans seemed stunned.

Seconds later it was over and it was heartening to see the first reaction of many Bayern players was to go and console their opponents. Martin Demichelis put his arm round Argentine colleague Abbondanzieri, Kahn did the same. It was obvious Getafe had won the respect and admiration of the four-times European champions.

“I’ve played 140 games in the European Cup. I’ve played everywhere - Madrid, Milan, London and Barcelona - but tonight has been incredible. I’ve never experienced anything like this,” Kahn said. That comes from someone who played in the 1999 Champions League final against Manchester United remember.

“Getafe fought like madmen for 120 minutes and in these circumstances it is difficult to perform. We are obviously delighted but you have to feel for them.”

Getafe now pick themselves up for a league match at home to Real Zaragoza on Sunday and then take on Valencia in their second consecutive King’s Cup final next Wednesday.

When I went down to the mixed zone to talk to the players I had little doubt this team will be back to fight another day. With his eyes still red with tears, club captain David Belenguer made his way out of the dressing room and patiently talked to all the waiting reporters til well after 1am.

How can Getafe bounce back from this we asked? “Don’t worry,” he said. “We already have.”

Simon Baskett

PHOTO: Bayern Munich’s Luca Toni heads the winner against Getafe in the UEFA Cup quater-final second leg. April 10 REUTERS/Felix Ausin Ordonez