All-English final could be 39th game after all

Plans to introduce extra competitive matches on overseas soil between Premier League teams were met with almost universal disapproval two months ago - but there may yet be one next month anyway.

This season's Champions League final in Moscow on May 21 could well be an all-English encounter between either Manchester United and Liverpool or Manchester United and Chelsea after all three teams reached the semi-finals this week.

It is not quite the "39th Game" - an extra round of fixtures, played in five cities around the world - as envisioned by the Premier League and so widely vilified in February by leading football figures at home and abroad.

It is in fact, bigger than that. The 39th game idea - given support by leading Spanish and German leagues officials last week - was designed to showcase and market the best of the Premier League to fans in overseas countries.

What better marketing tool could the men in suits have devised than using the Champions League final for their needs?

United first have to overcome the considerable hurdle of Barcelona, while Liverpool meet Chelsea in the semis for the third time in four seasons before a final that will feature an English club for the fourth successive year.

It will also be the second season running that United, Liverpool and Chelsea have all made it to the semis - although last year Milan beat Liverpool in the final in Athens.

Never before though has there been an all-English final.

The Premier League, under-written by domestic and global TV deals worth more than a billion pounds, has become Europe's dominant league in the last decade with many of the world's top players earning huge salaries at the major clubs.

Had the quarter-final draw kept Arsenal and Liverpool apart - Liverpool knocked out Arsenal 5-3 on aggregate - then all four semi-finalists could well have been English.

This is not the first time in the half-century of European club soccer that English clubs have been the dominant force either - but there is a huge difference between now and the last time it happened in the late seventies and early eighties.

England's previous domination began when Liverpool won the European Cup in 1977. They successfully defended the trophy in 1978 before Nottingham Forest won it in 1979 and 1980.

Liverpool were triumphant again in 1981, Aston Villa were European champions in 1982 and after a hiatus in 1983, when SV Hamburg beat Juventus, Liverpool won it again in 1984.

The following year's Heysel Stadium disaster when 39 fans died in Brussels before Liverpool's defeat by Juventus led to a ban on English clubs until the 90s.

Big difference

The big difference between the eras is most of the players appearing for those clubs were English, or at least British.

United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal now only have a smattering of English players - and apart from Alex Ferguson who has been at United since 1986, none of them have a British manager either.

The success of the clubs is in direct contrast to the failure of the national team who will be absent from the European championship in Austria and Switzerland in June.

Many leading voices in European and world football including FIFA president Sepp Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini agonise over England's place at the heart of European football.

Germany's Franz Beckenbauer, who organised the 2006 World Cup finals and sits on the FIFA executive committee said this week that Euro 2008 would not be the same without England in it.

Beckenbauer, who is also a senior dignitary of four times European champions Bayern Munich, said that despite his club's wealth, they can no longer realistically compete against English clubs without similar funds to attract the best players.

Platini has been highly critical of English clubs for relying on foreign players. Blatter believes English clubs, and many others for that matter, have lost their national identities and wants to bring in a quota system to redress the balance.

UEFA have meanwhile said that there is absolutely no possibility of moving the final from Moscow even if it is an all-English occasion - and what better place for perhaps United and Liverpool fans to congregate than Red Square?

Even if Barcelona spoil the national party there seems little doubt that rich English clubs will have a major say in the outcome of the Champions League for years to come and that 39th game could have arrived after all.