SIR – All the sports pages of our national press yesterday were shouting about Chelsea winning the Champions League on Saturday, but why is this something to celebrate?

Chelsea’s fans are predominantly English, and Stamford Bridge is geographically located in London; so far so good.

The club’s owner is a Russian billionaire, the current manager Italian, and the majority of players are foreigners, bought in with piles of foreign money.

Perhaps someone can educate me on how the victories of this foreign club are cause for celebration for Englishmen?

Clubs such as Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal are foreign-owned and the majority of their players are foreigners bought with foreign money.

While it appears that it is this combination which wins silverware, it is also this combination which removes their right to be called English club sides.

When their opponents lose to them, they are in reality losing to the rest of the world, not to another English club side.

If this imbalance remains untouched by an apparently impotent, corrupt or gutless FIFA, then the top spots will remain occupied by foreignowned clubs with deep pockets, and English clubs will languish in the bottom half of the Premier League forever.

I make this blindingly obvious observation as an impartial observer, as I am not a follower of football.

I feel that it is obscene to pay footballers outrageous sums of money for kicking a football around a field and equally unsatisfactory to call a foreign-owned and foreignmanaged club, filled with foreign players, English.

WILL RICHARDS
Malvern