New Wembley builds a new legend

Keep your eye on the prize!

Believe me, they give off some heat!

It was a momentous week even for Wembley standards. The Venue of Legends staged the world's two biggest club games in three days, then an international.

Nothing, not even the World Cup beats the Champions League Final for quality and now probably, glory as the pride of the Bundesliga, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund squared up.

A winner now, contrast to a year ago

Dortmund togetherness in defeat

The other big game, measured by sheer prize money was Crystal Palace against Watford for the keys to the Premier League and a £145m boost to the balance sheet.

The Champions League Final gets bigger every year. The switch from midweek to Saturday night takes it into the cultural mainstream. From Saint and Greavsie to Ant and Dec, if you like.

The moment the new champions were crowned

The opening ceremony starring a fully-fledged medieval battle between the red forces of Munich and yellow of Dortmund complete with bow and arrows, was kicked off with West End star, the War Horse.

Honestly, ITV missed a huge trick not broadcasting it in their Saturday night output.

Live flares from Bayern fall on fans below

Instead, they stuck with the foursome of drony Philistines pontificating on the irrelevant "could happen" points. While Adrian Chiles and Roy Keane swapped soundings, the choreography outside was literally marvellous. 

And the game didn't disappoint either. Bayern took their chances where Dortmund didn't and the master unlocker, Arjen Robben set one up and scored the other in the 2-1 win.

So often, this was a textbook demonstration of how to attack against how to defend.

Medieval warfare: the opening ceremony

But in Bayern's win, we're witnessing a change of guard at the top of European football. To win it a year after the disappointment of losing to Chelsea in their own stadium is a mark of a mighty setup. Follow that Pep Guardiola! 

War Horse from the West End 

Palace's win over Watford was more cagey. No one was going to be responsble for triggering tears in the boardroom. As it was, the headlines made were more romantic than the match.

39-year-old Kevin Phillips came off the bench to score the most valuable of his 280 career goals against the club where he made his name in his last game before retirement.

Wilfried Zaha was so often the difference for Palace, with his clever touches on the floor and even brainier short-passing. But Manchester United will observe he needs to build on his game, just as Cristiano Ronaldo needed to in his first days at Old Trafford. 

The semi-final vanquished were Real & Barca

England v Republic of Ireland rounded off the crowded fixture list as the FA's 150th anniversary game commemorated darker days between the two countries. It was the first fixture between the two since that ill-fated night in Dublin where crowd trouble brought the game to a premature end.

Frank Lampard's goal-trail continued. His 29th international strike puts him just one behind Alan Shearer in the all-time scoring parade. Who says the Chelsea midfielder can't go on and score half a dozen more for his country? 

New Wembley is building its legend slowly but surely. It's just seven years old, but the atmosphere, particularly in the two club games was noisy, excitable and befitting the occasions. 

For a modern building, it has a soul.

Second guessing Queen's Park Rangers' fate.

As QPR face Leeds United in the final game of their Championship-winning season, we're still no nearer knowing whether they'll be playing in the Premier League next season.

Despite the transgressions of West Ham, who it was decided had benefited from the purchase of Carlos Tevez at the expense of Sheffield United, there's no precedent for the alleged transgressions that Rangers have committed.

QPR are promoted as champions and will be awarded the trophy today, but face seven charges relating to the £3.5million registration of midfielder Alejandro Faurlin in 2009. The club deny everything.

They're represented by Ian Mill QC, who acted for the Blades during the Tevez affair which saw the rules on third-party ownership clarified.

The four-man three-day hearing began at Wembley on Tuesday and it's impossible to guess the outcome of their decision. So I'm going to try. The verdict was supposed to be delivered yesterday, but I think by delaying it they're boxing clever.

Faced by Mill, the QC with the fearsome reputation and the combined ownership of Bernie Ecclestone, Flavio Briatore and Lakshmi Mittal, the Commission needn't draw on anything similar previously and can be seen to look tough without materially changing QPR's promotion.

Therefore, I predict a points deduction which keeps them above third-placed Cardiff, and a six-figure fine. It'll rob them of the title but won't stop the promotion party. The playoffs won't be moved and life will go on.

Governing bodies are running scared in the era of multinational ownership, financial muscle and legal henchman, and this affair will no different.

Kiss every trophy available. It's the Football League Championship!

Courtesy of the Football League's new sponsor, npower, I've now added the Football League Championship to my collection of intimate embraces.

It's the one Liverpool created so many great sides for and my own team, Aston Villa won it on seven occasions. Manchester United last won it in 1967 (ha, we've done it more recently, even City have!)

Aaah, the Victorian elegance of it!

When winters really were winters! When a win was worth just two points. When winning the title with 64 points probably would've clinched it most years .... and when finishing third guaranteed promotion to a higher division!

This cup might be awarded to the second tier of the English game these days, but you can't rewrite the majesty of history that surrounds this beautiful old piece of craftsmanship. I'm delighted the Football League still award it. Compared to the modern, nouveau riche lines of the Premier League trophy, this one more than any other personifies where football came from; that great Victorian era of invention and ideas.

End of lecture!

Play-offs would've stopped English football's greatest story

I overheard a conversation about Nottingham Forest last night. A casual observer asked if Forest had finished third in this season's Championship, why Blackpool, three places and nine points behind them would be in the Premier League instead of them next season?

The Tangerines, who on the last day of the season clinched the final playoff place, beat two teams in a knockout competition at the end of a rigorous campaign. Basically, Blackpool came into form at the right time as Forest got tired. The team who finish sixth often win promotion. When it was explained to the observer why the playoffs existed, "money" was the predictable, but truthful answer given.

Which reminds me. In 1977, Forest also secured third place in the same division to claim their place among the elite. There were no playoffs then. The rest, as they say, is history.

What came next was one of the most extraordinary ascents to the game's summit ever seen.

Brian Clough's men stormed all before them: signing Peter Shilton and Kenny Burns in the close-season, Forest went on to complete an astonishing League Championship and League Cup double followed by a successful defence of the League Cup and the first of two successive European Cups. Trevor Francis became the first million pound player and journeymen like John Robertson, Archie Gemmill and Tony Woodcock became football's biggest stars.

I'm not saying Billy Davies' charges would have done the same thing had they been promoted, but it's highly questionable if the extraordinary events would've unfolded for Cloughie's men had they been forced to play three more games at the end of a tough campaign, and just to earn the promotion they'd already won on merit.

There aren't relegation playoffs anymore as defeat for the vanquished is too painful, the drama too acute. Remember the riots at the Chelsea v Middlesbrough game at Stamford Bridge all those years ago? The conventional wisdom is that playoffs should be about a positive prize - promotion to the higher league. And that tired metaphor about the Premier League's Promised Land.

But given the history of Nottingham Forest, I am not sure about the play-offs at all.

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