By Myles Palmer

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Friday's Champions League draw gives Arsenal another shot at the holy grail.

That's the theory, anyway.

Rooney and Rio will feel sick when they see the top 16 paired off in 8 games.

They will feel good after beating Wigan 4-0 last night and bad when they see those eight games listed on TV.

Then the Champions League shuts down till February 21.

In that winter break you might want to read a book about how European football evolved into the TV-funded Champions League we have today.

Fields of Gold, Paths of Glory, by Kevin Connolly and Rab MacWilliam, is a history of European football treated thematically as well as chronologically.

Club football and international football are covered and it's informative reading if you don't know that much of what happened in football before the present era.

I didn't know much about how we exported the game after 1888, when the Football League formed with 12 clubs.

It was British sailors, textile workers, students and businessmen who took the game to Hamburg, Vienna, Genoa, Milan, Zurich and Seville.

Kevin Connolly was Arsenal's programme editor for 15 years and knows everything about the club. He also knows a lot about top coaches, German football, Czech football, and TV deals

Chapter 3 is titled Chapman's Arsenal - and their European counterparts.

He says that Herbert Chapman made Arsenal.

"He laid the foundations for every success that they have achieved since. Without him, there would have been no marble halls of Highbury, no double in 1971 and no Arsene Wenger to redefine the club's image in a new century."

In 1926, Chapman won his third title with Huddersfield and top football scribe Ivan Sharpe recalled a remark Chapman made to him.

The visionary manager said, "What a chance there is in London. I would like to build a Newcastle United there."

The history of football tends to repeat itself and it's interesting to note the persuasive powers of certain charismatic managers (Shankly,Clough) down the decades.

Like Wenger, Chapman made a defender out of a midfield player in 1926 when he switched George Male to right back.

Male said, "After he had finished talking to me, I was convinced not only that I was a right back but also the best right back in England."

As you probably know, Cliff Bastin was the Marc Overmars of the thirties, a very fast, goalscoring winger.

FOOTBALL is all about now, today's match, tomorrow's match, especially since the arrival of Sky Sports News, which sets a tone that is topical and tabloid.

We are so heavily bombarded with non-news - trivia, speculation, banal comments from players - that we can easily forget the recent past.

On page 192 this book reminds us that in 1987, pre-Bosman, Marco van Basten was out of contract at Ajax and sold to AC Milan for a mere $750,000.

Milan already had Ruud Gullit. He had been at PSV and was under contract there until 1990.But Berlusconi signed him for a world record fee of £6.5 million.

In 1988, Berlusconi wanted to bring back striker Claudio Borghi from a loan spell, and fell out with Sacchi over it.

Sacchi wanted Frank Rijkaard from Real Zaragoza. Eventually, Sacchi won that argument and signed his third Dutchman.

Carlo Ancelotti played on the left flank in that team.

He said,"Rijkaard was such a good all-rounder - one of the first midfield players who could do every job on the pitch."

There is some good stuff on Barcelona and Real Madrid, detailing how the Real players responded well to the low-key approach of the avuncular Vincent del Bosque.

The germ of Real Madrid's current troubles can be traced to a quote from president Florentino Perez in 2000, who said, "This club should have the best players in the world because they're the most profitable ones. Signing a world class star means great international projection for Real Madrid and that translates into economic profit."

So he bought Figo in 2000, Zidane in 2001, Ronaldo in 2002, Beckham in 2003 and Owen in 2004.

Too many galacticos.

As Santi Solari commented, the middle class was eliminated.

Most of the teams which have won the European Cup have had a combination of qualities.

Ideally, you need pace, flair, steel, organisation and mental toughness.

You don't need all those equalities.

At Nottingham Forest, only Trevor Francis had pace.

Friday's draw has 16 teams and Juventus, Bayern, Barcelona and Chelsea are the strongest four.

But Inter Milan look better every week, so you never know.

Would Inter beat Bayern or Chelsea ?

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Fields of Gold, Paths of Glory - The History of European Football by Kevin Connolly & Rab MacWilliam (Mainstream.£16.99.)

December 15th 2005.

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