The deal is done and the British dream team of McLaren, Hamilton and Button. The engines may be supplied by Mercedes, but they are built in the Northampton and that almost counts.

Last time two A-list drivers were together at McLaren things did not go well with Alonso leaving after one year of his three year contract. Looking back a little further and the team was in a similar position when Alain Prost was at the top of his game was joined by Ayrton Senna in the late 80’s.

It was a pairing that won 15 out of 16 races (and 199 points in the constructors championship) in perhaps the most dominant season long performance by a single team, the only reason they did not make it a clean sweep was Jean-Louis Schlesser tripping up Senna at the first chicane at Monza when the race was clearly in the bag.

These were two drivers using every trick to get one up over each other. Their already strained relationship disintegrated completely in 1989. Prost accused Senna of driving dangerously and that McLaren clearly favoured Senna towards the end of the year. Prost won the drivers title under very controversial circumstances.

It was only shortly before Ayrton died that they reconciled, I think both understood that it took another great driver challenging them to really raise their game.

A team-mate is the only person with the same car, engine and support as you. No one wants to get beaten by someone with identical equipment, especially in the ego driven/sports psychology led world of F1.

Maybe the best example of how it could go wrong was Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet at Williams, again in the late 80’s. Nelson was truly awesome at mind games; he’d talk off record to the press about new differentials or other trinkets that were helping his performance. Some of these parts were vapourware and never existed, but Nigel heard the rumours and believed that the Sir Frank and Patrick Head were giving Nelson preferential treatment.

The battle was intense and they both lost the ’86 world title to Alain Prost despite having the best cars on the grid. In ’87 it’s arguable the Piquet was not as fast as Nigel, but the mind games got the better of Mansell and despite more wins for the British driver, Nelson won the championship.

Prost in 1986 was a perfect example of the difference between winning a title and not loosing it. Alain steadily racked up points while the Williams drivers went for wins, beating each other and pushing a superior car too hard at times.

There is lots of history to show it’s very difficult for two top drivers to coexist in a team with out friction or favouritism (perceived or real) being shown.

McLaren clearly knows how to run two completive cars and work together as a team that is focused on winning championships. The question can the two drivers keep the team unified and working together instead of (as history has shown) splitting the team.

I think Nigel Whitmarsh is strong enough and has the authority to make it happen, but it’s also going to need Lewis’s people getting on with Jenson’s people and the drivers staying above the politics and rumour mongering.

Team boss Nigel Whitmarsh has addressed this recently and said:

“I think we’re very lucky in that, with Jenson and Lewis, we have two fiercely competitive individuals who both fully understand the benefit of teamwork.”

“They’re both phenomenal team players. And my job is to manage that racer’s instinct. They are there to race each other – and the only instruction they’ll receive from me is to respect each other on the track. But that’s it – other than that, they’re free to race.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve looked forward to an F1 season like this, it’s got to potential to be a great one and I think the relationship between the two McLaren drivers is going to be critical to the teams success.

In a rather nice gesture Wigan players are offering to refund the ticket money of all the supporters that made the trek to White Heart Lane for the 9-1 thrashing in what may be one of the worse performances in the 20 year history of the Premier League.

The total refund is somewhere around $16,000 for the 400 or so fans that madethe long trip from Wigan to London for the day. While it’s not much for a Premier League striker it’s a very nice gesture in a sport where players are often accused of being out of touch with the average fan.

Tottenham 9, Wigan 1 – Video highlights

One fan said “I’ve watched them for 30 years. When you’ve been to Barnet and lost 5-0, I can accept a bad defeat, and untill today that was the low point.” Barnet were three divisions lower at the time and on the verge of bankruptcy.

It’s easy to support Manchester United, buy the shirt, maybe a scarf, set the DVR and bask in the reflected glory. Following Aldershot, Coventry and their like requires a little more effort and a lot more suffering.

I spent a lot of Saturday afternoons standing in the West Shed at the Recreation Ground, Aldershot FC’s home, I’ve watched some of the worst football professional football around. However the special moments, beating the big clubs like Wolves, watching a good cup run and starting every season with the belief that this may be the year it all comes together.

Occasionally it did happen and winning promotion in ‘87 to the Third Division (now League 2) by beating former top tier sides Bolton and Wolves in the first year of the playoffs. Two years later the club was back in the Fourth Division and shortly after filed for bankruptcy and were thrown out of the Football League. Aldershot FC were the first Football club to do so since Acrrington Stanley more than 30 years earlier.

If seasons like 86-87 can happen to Aldershot, they can happen to any side, and that is the magic of sports. There is a moment when everyone has a 0-0-0 record, going into that first game of the year anything is possible,

90 minutes later the dream may still be alive, but for a moment it’s there.

It is not the first time that players have paid out to fans after a bad result. Earlier this year over 500 German fans of Energie Cottbus were offered refunds from the players after a 760-mile trip lose 4-0 to Schalke.

It’s a great gesture by the players who clearly earned a lot of goodwill with the fans who made the trip.

Liverpool are not having a good year and tonight they were knocked out of the Champions League. It’s the first time since Benitez arrived in 2004 that the team has failed to make the knock out stages.

Liverpool were in a position where they needed other teams results to start going their way. They had to win and Fiorentina needed to drop points to Lyon. Liverpool beat Debrecen 1-0 in Budapest, however the Italian club beat Lyon by the same score.

The board has given him a vote of confidence and like the players, publicly state are fully behind the manager.

Saturday they play away at Everton in the first of the Liverpool derbys this year, while it’s not a must win game, they are 13 points behind the leaders and 6 points away from a place in the Champions League next year.

They need to start winning, clearly the Premier League is beyond them once again. I find it staggering that it’s been almost 20 years since the mighty reds last won the title. They were the team to beat in the 70’s and 80’s and at their height under Bob Paisley were possibly the best club side Europe has ever seen.

Real Madrid with Puskas or Liverpool with Dalglesh, two teams that were technically superior to anyone else. It would have been something to see.

As with every other failure in European Football there are significant financial implications. Making it into the first round of the knock out phase was worth maybe $4 Million, going al the way to the final was worth an estimated $70-80 to Barcelona last year. Again the sums money being thrown around is just staggering.

We went to Fado, an Irish pub downtown tonight, it was part of the events around the MLS Cup final this weekend. It was put on by one of the supporters group and we got a couple of minutes with Roger Levesque.

I’ve been a Sounders fan for a few years and Roger has been a long time fan favorite. He seems to be living his dream, he’s being paid to play football in a town that loves the game and I believe appreciates him and his ‘tash.

He was very genuine in his appreciation of the fans and the way Quest has been an incredible place to play this year.

A question I have been pondering is why am I going to sit in the rain for a couple of hours on Sunday, to watch two teams I have no rooting interest in?

In part it’s an opportunity to show that we care about the game, that this city is bigger than the Sounders. To pay respect to the sport, the league and the players who have given us so much over the last 9 months.

It’s also one last chance to go for a quick pint in Fuel, march to the match and show the world what it means to be part of the rave green army until we start the whole thing over next March.

My father has talked about British sovereignty being given to Brussels over the last 35 years, and to some degree he’s correct. A series of treaties that have built upon each other, together these have given the European Parliament some significant powers in limited areas.

The next stepping stone was the Treaty of Lisbon, it created two posts that would be the EU equivalent of President and Foreign Secretary. These two appointments were in part designed to give the EU more of a “face” and give foreign diplomats and ministers someone to call instead of being forced into the maze of EU departments.

The appointment of two rather minor figures to these posts says an awful lot of how the 27 members of the EU see the role of the parliament and council.

These roles were being sold at one point as big posts with real power, have been filled by the Belgium center-right Prime minister and a Labour Party stalwart with zero experience running foreign affairs.

Not exactly figures that will be giving other heads of state sleepless nights. It is not just that the national leaders do not want a high profile rival, as Tony Blair would have been had he got the job. It also shows that the EU is far from a coherent political entity and to be fair it seems that some members do not want it to be.

The Union has accomplished many good things. It has tied everyone to each other and ended conflict in Europe, it has certainly led to growth and prosperity. It runs a single market, eliminated border controls and keeps playing fields between members level. However it seems its members are not quite ready to stand back while Brussels and Strasbourg based diplomats took over running the community.

The appointments show that the members were not ready to make Lisbon another step towards a United States of Europe. It is a small shuffle forward, but no more than that.

Incidentally the new president of Europe once said “Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe”. “The universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey.”

In the big scheme of things it’s just a football match, but to be denied a berth in the world Cup because of such a blatant handball is nearly as tough as being knocked out by a blatant handball. On the bright side he’s not claimed it was the hand of god that allowed him to score.

The referees decision is final, the rules clearly state that. Giovanni Trapattoni (Irish manager) understands that mistakes get made and is being rather stoic about the whole thing. He has questioned how the ref was selected for the game, but has not really condemning anyone and is coming across as a class act.

Thiery Henry “I will be honest, it was a hand ball, but I’m not the ref. I played it. The ref allowed it.”

My favorite quote so far comes from the head of the Irish FA John Delaney

“If we had qualified in this manner, I wouldn’t be happy.”

Maybe true, but you’d still be going and would be doing what the French are doing, keeping quiet.

Unfortunately for Henry (as it is for Maradona, thought Maradona has not exactly helped his cause since the hand of god incident) when people look back on his career, it will be this they remember, not the great player he was and just because the referee and his linesmen missed it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Given saw it, Gallas saw it, the defenders saw it and it’s on Youtube for the rest of the world to see. And even though they are quiet about it, all of France saw it’s captain and senior player cheat.

As a sports fan in Seattle 2008 was pretty bad. Sonics left to become the Thunder (and they still suck), the Mariners were unbelievably bad, the Seahawks were rough and the Huskies did not win a game.

As someone who used to go to most of Coventry Cities home games before moving to Seattle, I understand disappointment and suffering is a fundamental part of the fan experience. I used to think not flirting with relegation in the last couple of weeks of the season was a good year.

That expectation was reset on opening night. When I brought season tickets I never imagined anything like that happening, the atmosphere was incredible and 32,000 people made it a night to remember. So much fun, it started with the march to the match and just kept going for the next three and a bit hours. The first goal followed by the second and third, Sigi paying tribute to the USL Sounders by sending Roger Levesque on as a late sub so the faithful could show their appreciation. I’ve been to a lot of games and that night is pretty close to the top of the list.

Barcelona and Chelsea visited mid season and showed two packed houses how the game can be played. Barcelona especially were sublime, the way they controlled the pace of the game was beautiful to watch.

The MLS is a physical league and some Seattle players have been on the receiving end. The refereeing has not helped, lets just say the quality has been mixed. There are a couple of refs that have let games go and been consistent in their calling, but they are in the minority.

I love the game and at the beginning of the year I saw a team that would be fun to watch, had a lot of firepower in Montero and Ljungberg, but big holes in defence. I did not see many 0-0 games on the cards. I was partially right, the team played some very entertaining games, but the defence led by Keller and JKH was tighter then I’d ever imagined. However up front it became a season of missed chances and a big swoon during the middle of the season where scoring seemed little more than a dream.

Next year we get to see CONCACAF Champions League, hopefully we get an away game somewhere south of the border with a beach, that would be a fun trip.

There are a couple of ways to look at Toyota (and BMW, and Honda) walking away for their investment in F1 and the potential of Renault joining them on the sideline.

In 2010 there will be two or three grandees of Mercedes GP (formerly Brawn), Ferrari and potentially Renault. Everyone else has engines supplied by an outside manufacturer.

First scenario is that it’s back to the 70’s where there were the grandees of Ferrari, Renault and Alfa alongside the garagistes that made up the rest of the grid. They used the proven formula of a DFV engine and a Hewland gear box married to an aluminium monocoque chassis with some form of inboard suspension. Ligier always liked to do things a little differently and ran Matra engines.

Williams and McLaren are the only garagistes left from the 70’s with the same names (and I get that a lot of teams can trace lineage back to that era), not coincidentally both followed the DFV formula and both had success with it.

In 1978 (picked at random) 46 drivers entered at least one race in the championship and Cosworth powered 39 of them. Fourteen different constructors and 21 different drivers scored points.

Scenario number two is there are two or three big teams and a bunch of cars with customer engines that are at a disadvantage of not having the latest power plants. Making F1 a two or three horse race with everyone making up the numbers.

Typically there have only been one or two teams that have been totally competitive in any year. During the 70’s and 80’s Ferrari had a lot of mediocre years despite having more resources than any of the garagistes.

2010 will be a fascinating year, it’s possible someone will run away with the championship, but it seems unlikely. The teams that understand and adapt to the changes the best will do well. It’s going to be interesting to see who that is going to be.

I don’t feel that a return to the big, varied grids of the 70’s would be a bad thing. While F1 is an engineering exercise, it’s supposed to be entertaining and giving creative people a reliable and competitive engine/transmission package and letting them innovate around that could throw up a number of surprises, and that keeps the racing interesting.

There are days that I just love the British red tops and their jingoistic slant on life, and today is one of them.

“Button forced out”, “Team Germany” and “New world champion left out in the cold” are the favorite titles I’ve seen so far.

Mercedes and a Middle Eastern investment company have purchased a majority stake in Brawn GP, who is now being rebranded as “Mercedes GP”. With Nico Rosberg already signed for 2010, the second seat has been rumoured to be going to Nick Heidfeld or possibly Timo Glock.

The car will be prepared and run from the UK, but a championship win for the new Mercedes team with a German driver would be huge. Schumacher is the only German F1 world champion and a couple of years after his retirement may still be the highest profile German sports figure.

The Daily Mirror goes on to speculate that “British world champion Button was forced to quit Brawn because they fear [Rosberg] would be outclassed by Button, just as he was by Hamilton when they were team-mates in karting.”

Jenson Button wants a pay rise (and reasonably so) and as champion brings the number-1 plate to whichever team he ends up with. The serious money seems to be on Button getting a seat at McLaren along side Lewis Hamilton. That would be quite the team. If they can be given a competitive car, and the second half of the season indicates they can, it should be a very interesting looking package. .

In some good news Felipe Massa drove an F1 car for the first time since his accident in Hungary. He drove next to Alonso at an end of year Ferrari event in Spain over the weekend.

Next year just got a little more fun as the mighty Germans go against the British lads at McLaren. With the British inferiority complex in full swing I’m sure phrases like “underdog”, “plucky” and lots of references to the war will be thrown around as the season goes on.

Its 9 months to the world cup and England are in the midst of a full-blown keeper crisis. OK, crisis may be rather strong, but there is a problem and the British red tops are going to have fun with this.

Capello has been totally clear, anyone who wants to play for England during the tournament needs to be playing regular top-flight football. Beckham is heading to Milan in a week or two to play for AC and hopefully a place on the flight to South Africa.

Ben Foster started in Doha against Brazil yesterday and was not at fault for the goal, the two central defenders were half asleep and beaten by a well-timed run and a very nicely taken goal.

A few minutes later Foster was put in a tough spot by Wes Brown and made contact with the Brazilian striker and conceded a penalty and a yellow card. The penalty was missed, but Foster had a fairly solid game behind a defense found wanting when faced with runners through the channels.

Fosters problem is that he is not even on been on the bench for Manchester United over the last few weeks. He seems to third choice behind Van der Sar and Kuszczak for his club. Despite that he is starting for England, rather a unique situation and an indication of the dearth of domestic talent at that position.

The previous first choice keeper James (and his interesting hairstyles) has a nagging knee injury that means it’s a couple of days after a game before he can rejoin training. With 4 games in 15 days during the group stages this is a problem. James was not with the team in Doha and has played in only one of the last 8 internationals.

Capello has also made it clear that players need to be fully fit to make the trip to South Africa.

The third keeper in the mix has been Robert Green. Green started six consecutive matches before his sending-off for a professional foul in the 1-0 defeat by Ukraine last month. In the past two matches Green has been in the squad, however Capello has chosen Foster for both games.

England has some problems between the posts and if James is fit he seems to be the first choice. If he’s not fit it becomes a big problem for Capello.