Bramcote, Nottingham

An Englishman watching the scene, a soccer official, confides that he first got this close to the cup thirty years ago, Where? In Bramcote, a suburb of Nottingham. One of Brian Clough’s brothers ran the local post office-cum-newsagents, and Clough himself would sometimes pop in and serve customers, or just stand behind the counter reading the papers. One Sunday morning when the future official went in with his grandfather, there was the European Cup freshly won by Forest, plunked on top of a pile of Nottingham Evening Post. Behind it stood Brian Clough, holding and open newspaper in front of his face. He neither moved nor spoke, but he knew the boy would remember the scene forever. The official remembers: “I was too young and shy to speak to the man, which I regret to this day.”

It's odd to think of the game's biggest club trophy ending up in a place like Bramcote. yet it's not that exceptional. Provincial towns like Nottingham, Glasgow, Dortmund, Birmingham or Rotterdam have all won European Cups, while the seven biggest metropolitan areas in Europe -Istanbul, Paris, Moscow, London, St. Petersburg, Berlin, an Athens- never have. This point to an odd connection between city size, capital cities, an soccer succces. Here's why Arsenal and Chelsea haven't won the Champions League (but may soon)

(Soccernomics. Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski)