Over the last few years it has become popular to enjoy football matches in the pub, rather than at the stadiums themselves. This is even more true of the often far-flung international summer tournaments and increasingly people want to watch each match alongside supporters who have a vested interest in its outcome. Two years ago we were one of several sites offering tips on where to go around London to watch Iran, Argentina, Ghana......

"Everything is better with a bit of humour." So said Roberto Donadoni, as Italian football manager the incumbent of one of the most pressurised posts in the world, last Monday night in a special seminar organised by Birkbeck College Sport Business Centre. A healthy dose of self-deprecation is a useful asset in a job where your public always let you know who you're working for and what you should be doing: "This happened just......

While many of us will be looking forward to a very pleasant lie-in this morning 251 crews will be down by the Thames at the crack of dawn preparing themselves for the 10am start of the 2008 Womens' Head of the River Race (WEHORR). In contrast to most years, though, the very cream of Britain's female rowing talent will not be taking part as they're on their way back from a pre-Olympic training camp......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. M Manzes 87 Tower Bridge Road SE1 4TW 020 7407 2985 Nearest Tube: Borough Mon: 11am - 2pm Tue-Thurs: 10.30am - 2pm Fri: 10am - 2.30pm Sat: 10am - 2.45pm Expect to Pay: Between £2.70 and £4.90 for pie and mash, £3.20 for eels and mash. Rating: 9 out of 10 Ahh traditional London fare. Food born out of......

For over a year now Disney’s hit High School Musical has been pretty much inescapable, spawning two chart-topping soundtracks and launching the career of tween idol Zac Efron. The HSM bandwagon shows no signs of slowing down either, with the legitimate theatre production of the film playing a short stint at London’s Apollo Hammersmith Theatre as of June 30th. This new incarnation is separate from the UK tour, which begins on February 19th in......

The United States remains tops in London’s tourism market, according to stats released by Visit London, as leaders of the tourism industry convene this week at London’s annual World Travel Market. This, despite the dollar’s worst performance against the pound in 26 years. That whimper you hear every morning? A collective sigh from your American coworkers, mates, and visitors, as they monitor the daily exchange rate. The American market, though continuing to send forth......

And so to our final rugby watching venue post with just 4 teams remaining to accommodate. Italy play Portugal tonight in Paris, 7pm Bar Italia - where else? Japan crunch with Wales tomorrow in Cardiff at 8pm. We didn't think Japan would be the hardest nut to crack but our badgering and internetting and random contacting of Japanese people hasn't turned up a definitive option. So, we'll give you a unconfirmed one. Sirocco London......

Toff culture is this summer's big thing. We've had Pimms in Trafalgar Square and the Chap Olympics this weekend. It's only a matter of time before we start growing our incisors and refusing to drink tap water. The next step along the road to la-di-da-land is to acquire a luxury hamper. No longer the preserve of moderately successful gameshow contestants, they can now be enjoyed by the like of you. Yes, YOU. To get your......

So ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Milan, deducted eight league points for their involvement in the Calciopoli scandal, provide Europe's club champions, sitting alongside the Italian nation's triumph at last summer's world cup. (Incidentally, anyone who still disbelieves Filippo Inzaghi that Milan practice free kicks such as the one they scored from should have a look at this.) Former Milan CEO Adriano Galliani, banned for five months for his part in Calciopoli, was prominent amongst......

Londonist ask that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Santoré 59-61 Exmouth Market EC1R 4QL Map Average Lunch Price: £9 Rating: 9.5 out of 10 Some months back the entertainment section of Crumbs for Men magazine featured a rave review about Santoré, a phenomenally yummy pizzeria at Exmouth Market in Clerkenwell. Then, when Santoré began home-delivery, ontoLondon duly made a jubilant note. Now that Londonist is pondering what’s......

As the morning of the 2007 Champions League final dawns and Liverpool fans throng the streets of Athens, desperate to acquire a seat for tonight's match from amongst tens of thousands of corporate matchgoers, it seems an appropriate moment for the launch of our new series of articles looking at where football is going, particularly regarding off-the-field issues which seem increasingly to dominate newspaper back pages. Liverpool's opponents tonight, Milan, are especially apposite for......

Italian goalscoring star Cristiano Lucarelli (left of picture) told a packed University College London lecture theatre last night that his country's footballing culture had something to learn from the English and that given a choice of where he could play, "If I had supernatural powers I would take Livorno and put it in England!". Lucarelli, a totem for both his home town and their football team as well as a passionate socialist, was speaking......

This Day In London’s History 1937: A Japanese aircraft lands at Croydon Airport, setting a world record for the fastest flight from Tokyo to London. In the 1930s there had been considerable interest in establishing records for long distance flights, and a prize had been offered for the first flight between Paris and Tokyo to take less than 100 hours. However nobody had yet won this prize, despite many attempts, including one that failed......

After two successful public test events the new Wembley has been granted its test certificate by Brent Council and the FA has wasted no time in announcing the stadium as the venue for May 19th's FA Cup Final which could yet feature the dream final of Chelsea v Watford, though it might just as well see Blackburn facing Manchester United. The FA also confirmed that the players of Stevenage Borough and Kidderminster Harriers (FA......

A man emailed us to tell us about his website . It's a website that helps people swap football stickers. It didn't strike us as having an instant correlation with London, but then we thought that there are people in London who buy sticker albums and fill them with little stickers. We know some of these people. Some of these people might be us. One of these people might well have gone into a......

British Airways continues its ongoing campaign to prove to the world that airtravel for the 21st century is green, safe, convenient, and much cheaper than those using those stinky old trains. The Daily Mail reveals that British Airways has been attempting to sort out lost luggage by chucking it all on a plane and sending it to Italy where the Italian baggage handling establishment will sort it all out. No, seriously. We're not making......

If you're a car thief, yesterday might have been a good time to be out there. 350 TVR drivers and workers came to London in their swanky cars protesting about the company's re-location to Italy. A Dutch architect is going to create an "East End Amsterdam" in London. This will include an urban village, a floating office, and a disappointing lack of hookers. Cheapside is trying to not be deserted at weekends by opening......

Now you see it, now you don’t. The surprise announcement a week ago that Leyton Orient’s Matchroom Stadium would host an international for the first time ever proved to be a touch premature as the Congolese Football Federation yesterday announced that their proposed game with Albania had been called off. Leyton Orient’s own website said: The game's promoters were unable to agree terms with the relevant authorities, leaving them with no option but to......

Despite what the ladies at the River Cafe would have us believe, Italian cooking, real, genuine, hardcore Italian cooking involves a bit more than drizzing expensive olive oil over bits of toast. Antonio Carluccio is the man to consult when going for the big guns in terms of Italian cuisine, and in between serving London the finest of Italian food in his restaurants, cafes and shops, he is giving a talk at the V&A......

So Tate Modern gets turned into a minimalist, brushed steel, grown-ups adventure playground and meanwhile, in Battersea, another London power station has a makeover... Like the bottle of olive oil in an Italy-shaped novelty glass bottle that has been in the kitchen cupboard since that trip to Florence in 2004, London has always been meaning to do something with Battersea Power Station. It just sits there. It shouldn't be wasted. It's still useful. C'mon, think.........

Here's a headline you don't see everyday: Mafia don arrested in London. Believe it or not, Raffaele Caldarelle, a 35-yearo-old who is thought to be the head of the Camorra crime organisation in Naples, owns a shoe shop in Hackney Caldarelle, who appeared in Westminster Magistrates Court yesterday morning, is facing extradition to Italy where he is wanted for drugs and weapon offences. But according to reports he's not one to go quietly. Dozens......

Religionists are a funny old lot: Thousands of people flocked to temples across India on Monday following reports that idols of Hindu gods were drinking milk given by devotees as sacred offerings, witnesses said. Teenagers, adults and the aged stood in long lines with garlands and bowls of milk to feed the idols of Lord Shiva, Lord Krishna and the elephant-headed Lord Ganesha, they said. And now it seems that the statues here in......

This day in London’s History 1948 The last Olympics to be held in London draw to a close. With most of Europe still under ration and all the piggybanks long smashed to pieces, it wasn’t a universally popular decision to hold the XIV Olympiad on this side of the Atlantic, if at all. Still, London got the nod, with a slightly remoulded Wembley as the focus. We weren’t exactly the most magnanimous of hosts:......

A surprising headline, to be sure, but we shouldn’t be that shocked. After all, he was first considered for the job six years ago. Then he was said to be unhappy with administrators overseeing team affairs, but now Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri, Dunga to his friends, captain of Brazil’s 1994 world cup winning side and member of the Queens Park Rangers board since Gianni Paladini’s arrival as majority shareholder in 2004, has succumbed to......

This summer, when Chelsea go out and lavish £31 million on Sheva, English football does not bat an eyelid. Galacticos come to play in the Premiership these days. 11 summers ago, it was very much a shock when Dennis Bergkamp arrived in London, because in 1995, the world's very best players went to Italy, or Spain, but not England. His coming was trumpeted in the tabs - '£7.5 million for Bergkamp!' - a seismic......

Flick to kick enthusiasts will be flocking to Millwall FC's Lions Sports Centre this weekend for the London International Open Subbuteo tournament. Players from Denmark, Italy, Belgium, France, Malta, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Australia will be challenging the UK's finest in individual competition on Saturday and a team tournament on Sunday. The London Table Football Club will be strongly represented and is running events and competitions alongside the main proceedings, the highlight......

"Some people are in the pie shop... they think it's all over... it is now! It's steak & onions in English ale!!!" Yes, while the rest of the world was distracted by some sporting festival or other Londoners knew that the real way to the world's heart was through its stomach. And so it was that the great, traditional pie making nations of England and Japan took to the counters of quality comestible purveyors......

Only four games to go now in the 2006 world cup. Yup, you read that right, four. "Wait," we hear you cry, " two semi-finals and a final!" Well, you may be surprised to hear that the world cup, in common with lots of Olympic events, still retains the gloriously anachronistic "3rd Place Final". Now, while we realise that after a month of concentrated footy only the most single-minded of round ball devotees will......

Two days to go and eight games to play in the group stages of the world cup and only Brazil and Spain are going into them sure of their places in the knockout phase. Much of today's attention will centre on the clash between the USA and Ghana at 3pm where a win would see Ghana through, as might a draw, but even a victory might not be enough for the States if the......

Following on from yesterday we pick our way through the group stage finale of the world cup focussing this time on groups E to H. This bottom half of the draw is still largely undecided in contrast to the top half and so here our suggestions are players with strong potential who might replace starters or high-upside regulars who are likely to be inexpensive. Group E Hang on. It turns out we were right......