The Carling Cup Final was played yesterday afternoon at the Millennium Stadium, and Arsenal's young boys finally ran out of gas against Chelsea's older and more experienced team. I will have to grudgingly concede that Arsenal's younger team have set this cup on fire this season, to the extent that it's perfectly valid to ask whether their more experienced players would have done any better. Certainly Jose Mourinho's reaction at the end of the match indicated that the so-called "Special One" (his words, not mine) was placing quite a lot of importance in this competition, which says a lot for what Manchester United have done to the rest of the Premiership this season.

The back pages, of course, were taken up with the massive fight that broke out at the end. The rest of the world has been discussing whose fault it was, who deserve to be sent off and who was unlucky. I'm not going to get involved in this "debate", largely because I couldn't give a toss. What I would like to add would be that it was pleasing to see two teams reverting to their stereotypes so easily. I have occasionally wondered what a pantomime would be like if it the baddies had to take on another set of baddies, and now I know the answer. It's very good entertainment indeed. I would suggest, in future, that if Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger want to do away with cup replays, they simply parachute a boxing ring onto the centre spot and let them fight it out. Last man standing wins. Of course, the suspicion is that this would give an unfair bias to Chelsea - at least it will so long as John Terry is fact. Terry confirmed my growing belief that he is filled with reinforced concrete yesterday afternoon by surviving having his head kicked clean of his shoulders. The situation went from him starting to turn blue on the pitch (taking club loyalty a shade too far, there) to being back at the hotel a mere couple of hours after the match had finished to join in the celebrations.

I'll write a full eulogy for the Millennium Stadium when we can be sure that it's the last major English match to be played there, but it's certainly a shame that it went out in something of a state of chaos, with thousands of supporters stranded on the trains and motorways after an accident on the M4 and a points failure at Newport. Now, everybody that lives in this country knows what the trains can be like, and I would point out that we all know that they run a reduced service on a Sunday, so what the hell were the Football League doing, playing a major final with 70,000 travelling supporters in Cardiff on that particular day of the week? It has been pointed out before that getting into and out of Cardiff on a Sunday is a uniquely cheerless experience. We could all see the large number of empty seats inside the stadium. Further brownie points should be knocked off for not even countenancing the concept of putting the kick-off time back to allow more people to arrive. Clearly an orderly kick-off time for Sky TV is more important to the Football League than actually allowing the people that had paid vast amounts of money for tickets to actually see what they'd paid for. Still, at least (with a bit of luck), it will serve as a timely reminder ahead of the Olympics and any World Cup bid that this country needs billions of pounds to be spent on its transport infrastructure.

So, that's one cup down, and there are still three to play for. I have just one further question: with Chelsea and Arsenal playing in next season's Champions League, would the other losing semi-finalists from this competition, Wycombe Wanderers, qualify for next year's UEFA Cup if Spurs qualify by some other means? They should at least get a run in the Intertoto Cup for their troubles - and, after all, starting off in Europe in the middle of the summer hasn't done Newcastle any harm this season, has it?

After the last round of Champions League group matches, there was considerable excitement at the fact that all five British clubs had qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League. It was, said much of the press, proof of the strength of the Premiership, and was almost certain, at some point, to set up a "mouth-watering" all-British knock-out tie. Speaking as a supporter of none of these five clubs, I would beg to differ.

This has been a weird season for European football, and it almost feels as if the game on this continent is going through something like a transitional phase. In Italy, Serie A is still rocking at its foundations as the fall-out from last summer's corruption scandal. Juventus, of course, aren't involved, and Milan have been struggling in the league. Britain and Italy take up no fewer than eight of the sixteen places in the last sixteen, but Roma, Inter and Milan don't seem to have the pulling power that they used to have to draw in the big names. Five further clubs come from Spain and France. Barcelona, of course, we know all about, but Real Madrid appear in some sort of turmoil (as ever), and Valencia have had a tough time of it so far, and lie in fifth place in La Liga. From the French contingent, Lyon have been the team of the tournament so far, but it's tempting to think that they might even have peaked too soon, and Lille can probably be dismissed as also-rans. The same can probably be said for Holland's PSV and Portugal's Porto. All of which leaves Bayern Munich, who are below par in the Bundesliga at the moment.

What irritates me to the point of distraction is the attitude of the press in this country, particularly the television broadcasters ITV, who seem to expect us to support the English clubs (and Celtic) because they're from England. Let me make it clear right now that I have no interest in Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool, and that I would prefer it if this self-perpetuating English elite all went out in the next round. It's unlikely, though. Liverpool will struggle against Barcelona (a shame, since if I had to choose, they'd be the team of the English sides that I'd want to win), and Celtic will have their work cut out against Milan, but we can certainly expect United, Chelsea and Arsenal to be in the last eight, playing out their increasingly tenuous mind games before a rapidly wearying public. Personally, I'll be lending my support to Lille.

1. Celtic vs Rangers - The Glasgow rivalry suits both Rangers and Celtic, but this is one of the fiercest local rivalries. As long ago as 1909, the Scottish Cup Final was abandoned because of repeated pitch invasions by supporters of both teams with battles being fought upon the pitch. Things have mellowed slightly over the last ten years or so, but The Auld Firm matches haven't even been dissipated in their passion and bile by the fact that the two teams meet four times per season in the league, as well as regularly in the two Scottish cup competitions. Socio-political feelings (some of a particularly nasty type) also underpin this fixture, but the main rage seems to be reserved for on the pitch, these days.

2. Tottenham Hotspur vs Arsenal - When football resumed at the end of the First World War in 1919, Arsenal chairman Henry Norris talked the Football League into voting The Gunners into the First Division at the expense of... their North London rivals, Spurs. They're the only team never to have been relegated from English football's top flight since. The atmosphere at a North London Derby remains one of the most poisonous in English football, and this hasn't been helped by Arsenal's rise into the Champions League elite whilst Spurs have consistently under-achieved for almost twenty years. Spurs fans like to think back to beating Arsenal in the first ever Wembley FA Cup semi-final in 1991. For Arsenal fans, it doesn't get much better than their 5-0 win at White Hart Lane in 1979.

3. Portsmouth vs Southampton - Two relatively benign clubs from the south coast of England, whose hatred of each other seems to know no bounds. Folklore has it that the intensity of the rivalry goes back to the nineteenth century, when dockers were bussed in from Southampton to break a strike on Portsmouth docks. Pompey folk will even tell you that the word "scum" is an acronym for "Southampton Company Union Men", though that's not true. Even now, the two towns tend to be something of a no-go area on match days.

4. Swansea City vs Cardiff City - The fortunes of Wales' two top teams have ebbed and flowed over the last thirty years or so to such an extent that these two teams very seldom meet, which must be something of a relief for South Wales Police, if no-one else. Matches between these two sides have frequently been marred by crowd disturbances, and there is even a story (possibly apocryphal) of a pre-match sky-diver at The Vetch Field who was blown into the Cardiff fans' end and received, well, not the best of welcomes from the visiting supporters.

5. Manchester City vs Manchester United - Don't pay too much heed of the story of Denis Law back-heeling United into the Second Division in 1973. It's not strictly true. The former United legend had gone to Maine Road from Old Trafford the previous summer, and he did back-heel a goal on the last day of the season with United staring relegation in the face, but it wasn't the goal that relegated United - results elsewhere had already rendered the result of that particular Manchester derby meaningless. United, of course, almost always get the better of City in these matches, but occasionally City put one over their considerably bigger rivals. In 2004, they beat United 4-1 at The City Of Manchester Stadium, and in 1989 beat them 5-1 at Maine Road.

6. Everton vs Liverpool - Of course, some people in England may try to tell you that the Merseyside Derby is the "friendly" derby, but the truth is more complex. Liverpool FC were only formed when Anfield fell empty after the rent there was put out of Everton's reach in 1892. The height of the rivalry came in the mid-to-late 1980s, when the two teams competed two FA Cup Finals, including an emotion-filled day at Wembley in 1989, shortly after the Hillsborough disaster had killed 96 Liverpool fans. Everton's record in these matches has improved dramatically in recent years. When they beat Liverpool 1-0 at Goodison Park in 1979, it was was their first victory over Liverpool in any competition in 9 years.

7. Brighton & Hove Albion vs Crystal Palace - At first glance, it may seem strange that one of English football's fiercest rivalries is between two teams 60 miles apart, one of which is one south coast, whilst the other is in South London. However, the roots of the Albion-Palace enmity go back to a number of successively more and more bad tempered between the two clubs in the mid to late 1970s, which culminated in Palace snatching the Second Division (now "The Championship") title away from Albion on the last day of the 1978-79 season. The rivalry exists to this day, though if you ask the majority of supporters of either club how it came about, it's doubtful that many of them would be able to remember.

8. Blackburn Rovers vs Burnley - These two Lancashire clubs have only been in the same division for one season since Blackburn were promoted into the inaugural Premier League in the summer of 1992, but the two former powerhouses have a lot of history. There used to be a tradition of carrying a coffin painted in the colours of either of the clubs if they were ever relegated, and when Burnley blew a chance of promotion from Division Four in the 1980s, a Blackburn supporter hired a plane and flew it over Burnley's Turf Moor on the last day of the season with a banner saying "STAYING DOWN 4 EVER, LOVE ROVERS" trailing from it.

9. West Ham United vs Millwall - It's a simple matter of geography for these two teams from East London, though West Ham are clearly the bigger club. Both sets of supporters have, at various points, been known to have a bad reputation, and it's commonplace nowadays for away fans to be banned from their (admittedly rare) meetings in the League. There are currently two divisions between them, though this gap could narrow of West Ham continue their current antics (though Millwall are doing a pretty good good job of trying to keep this gap open, as they are currently struggling to hold onto their place in League Two, just three years after reaching the FA Cup Final).

10. Newcastle United vs Sunderland - The first reported abandonment of an English football match due to crowd trouble was at a North East derby match at the turn of the century between these two clubs. As with many of the above rivalries, the local "bragging rights" have become more and more important as the two sides have continued to under-achieve. Newcastle haven't won a major trophy since the 1969 Fairs Cup (the predecessor to the UEFA Cup - and, no, I'm not including the Intertoto Cup as a major trophy!), whilst Sunderland haven't managed anything since their surprise FA Cup final win over Leeds United in 1973). Newcastle may be a division above Sunderland at the moment, and are having to make do with Middlesbrough for League rivalry at the moment, but ask them who they really dislike, and there's only one team in it.

Good morning/afternoon/evening, everyone. I was considering writing a full preview of today's match between Club America and Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, but then it occurred to me that it will be kicking off by the time I've finished writing it, so I've take an executive decision to jettison that plan.

Sitting here in the Media Centre at The Olympic Stadium in Tokyo (which looks like nothing so much as a bigger model of the gymnasium at the school which I went to), I am struck by the considerably greater number of journalists here this evening than there were in Toyota City last night. Now, Toyota City is an absolute devil to get to, and it has to be said that they didn't miss the match of the tournament, but I was surprised to see quite so many empty seats at the Toyota Stadium last night. It doesn't look as if we're going to see the same thing happening again tonight, though. The presence of big hitters like Branco and Claudio Lopez has seen to that.

I was up until three o'clock this morning, watching Arsenal and Chelsea battle out a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge. It was nice to see Jens Lehmann and Didier Drogba auditioning for their places as pantomime villains in time for this Christmas, but I rather think that most of these casting decisions have already been made for this year, at least. What is interesting is the difference in cultures between football at home and football out here. Out here, it's all about friendship, in that almost-slightly-nauseating "hands across the ocean" way FIFA talks about things. I rather think that the supporters are supposed to leave the stadia after the match arm-in-arm, exchanging scarves and forging new friendships. At home, it's amusing to see the spit and bile that was accompanying the match played yesterday afternoon. From Alexander Hleb clattering into Ashley Cole in the first minute to Lehmann and Drogba pretending to have been knocked about by each other, there was no "togetherness in the name of football" on display at the Bridge yesterday.

It becomes difficult to take any of it seriously. Regardless of whatever Arsene and Jose were whining about after the match (and the good thing about watching matches that finish at three in the morning is that you don't have to sit through any of that guff afterwards), a point each did neither of them any favours. The only winners last weekend were the improbably unbeatable Manchester United. Meanwhile, out here in Japan, there is a bit of a buzz in the air this evening. It feels like, after something of a preliminary last night, there could be a real match on here tonight. I'll be back later to let you know, in my usual illiterate and rambling way, roughly what happened. In the mean-time, I'm off for a wander around outside the ground to see if i can find anything interesting to take photos of.