London's premier league

Gianluca Vialli, the ex-Chelsea football player and manager, was the first premiership star ever to live uptown in la-di-da Belgravia. Not in leafy Essex or Hertfordshire, you understand, but in turbo-posh Eaton Square. Like all Italians, he had enjoyed a lifelong love affair with London and he wanted to be in the groovy, swinging, Austin Powers-ish thick of things, not stuck somewhere out in the sticks.

Unwittingly, Vialli started a trend. A massive influx of foreign (mainly French and Italian) players followed in his stylish wake, signing Lotto-figure deals with the glamour teams of Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal. They appeared immediately more sophisticated and metropolitan than our own parochial players, who craved mock-Tudor mansions in some benign but bland, gin and Jag, commuter-belt suburb.

At the time, supporters liked to brag about how their sides were attracting these world-class players because of their team's exciting, attacking football. This, I am afraid to tell you, is utter hokum.

European footballers come to London because of the fat wage packet, the shops, nightclubs and, most of all, the chance to make a killing on the property market - a bonus which is not so viable at, say, Liverpool, Blackburn or Aston Villa. (Spurs' Steffen Freund has recently collaborated with Arsenal's Sol Campbell on a buy-to-rent property).

That said, footballers aren't the most imaginative of coves. They do not gravitate to the edgy up-and-coming areas of Shoreditch, King's Cross or Clerkenwell. They don't want to commit to a 'project', but desire a ready-made living unit in an area that is already 'up' - clean, safe, lively, affluent and within an easy drive of the training ground.

Accordingly, the Italian stars of Stamford Bridge have founded a fabulous ghetto in Chelsea, while Arsenal's French pin-up boys have chosen Hampstead. English players still tend to favour Hertfordshire.

The Brits: Hertfordshire

We shouldn't ridicule our homegrown players for their sheep-like desire to set up homes in Hertfordshire. Unlike their Mediterranean counterparts, English footballers tend to come from rather miserable, innercity areas where green grass and open space are at a premium. As soon as they get the chance to get the hell out, they're off in search of more leafy, tranquil neighbourhoods. And who can blame them?

Superstars such as David Seaman, David Beckham and Sol Campbell are three players who have that British habit of equating success with the length of the crunchy gravel drive outside the country retreat. Here in Hertfordshire, status and success are measured by the bathroom count and the square footage of plasmascreen telly. Just look at Beckingham Palace, the Beckhams' overwrought £2.5m neo-Georgian mini-Versailles near Sawbridgeworth on the Essex/Herts border. The couple spent over £1m putting in all the usual footballer flash: a 100ft indoor pool, recording studio, helicopter landing pad and snooker room.

David Seaman is a real Herts homebody. Now 39 and a family man heading for retirement, he lives with his second wife Debbie, and their two children, Georgina, two-and-a-half, and Robbie, one. 'We love our house,' says Debbie of their traditional 16th century farmhouse in Sarratt, north of Rickmansworth, set in rolling acres with grazing sheep and a carp pond. 'It's the home of our dreams.' Mr and Mrs 'Safe Hands' like to play the perfect country couple keeping a cellar of fine wines and a humidor stuffed full of Monte Cristos.

Sol Campbell is an Englishman of a very different type. His £500,000 home, round the M25 near Cheshunt, Herts, truly is his castle, especially since he spent over £100,000 turning it into a fortress secure against irate fans after his controversial move last summer from Spurs to Arsenal. With hi-tech panic buttons, intruder alarms, CCTV, security lighting and infra-red sensors, it sounds impregnable. Campbell, 28, and famously reclusive, invests his money in property and designer clothes: you can see his team-mates' Continental influence rubbing off. He has an apartment in Wapping, and he's just bought a house in Arkwright Road, one of Hampstead's premier avenues, with old Spurs pal Steffen Freund. They're converting it into smart flats and a coach house as a property investment.

The trouble with Hertfordshire's landed-gentry lifestyle is that the nightlife sucks. Even the old footie players' stand-by, the Epping Forest Country Club in Essex, has shut down. At a push, the likes of Spurs' Les Ferdinand, who lives in nearby Barnet, might make it to the genteel Orange Tree pub in Totteridge (where his old team-mate David Ginola lives) for a quick lime juice and soda. The ambience there is quiet and mock rural, like a Richmond pub minus the intelligentsia, and the civilians are too well-mannered to ask for autographs. And as far as restaurants go, have you ever been to a Harvester before, Les?

The French: Hampstead

On a sharp winter Sunday morning, Hampstead's promenade of smart shops, delis and pavement cafés feels more like Courchevel or Val d'Isère than a North London enclave. There's an Agnès B, a Dôme, the Louis Patisserie, and La Creperie, where the Appleton sisters like to hang out with their respective Liams. No surprise, then, that Arsenal's French clique have moved in en masse.

But for the French foreign legion, there's more to Hampstead than a few superficial details. Hampstead, you see, like France, is a wellestablished stomping ground for intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals alike. Keats lived here, as did Freud and Peter Cook. Melvyn Bragg still resides in Hampstead and everybody's favourite pseud, Sting, kept a big old place in NW3 for ages.

The French players appear to delight in such cerebral provenance. They might not ever visit them, but they love having the academic kudos of Hampstead's little back streets, second-hand bookshops and the Screen on the Hill cinema (for that preview screening of Amélie or late-night showing of Jules et Jim) on their doorsteps.

Of course, the lefty egg-heads have mostly moved out, making way for property developers, but this suits the Continentals just fine. The French players, with their pert girlfriends and ultra-chic wives, expect their homes to match their flamboyant goal-scoring style. They don't want poky, Keatsian terracing. Space and light (think Provençal holiday home) are more important than historical details.

Accordingly, Arsenal goal-ace Thierry Henry, 25, has just spent £5.95m on one of Hampstead's most desirable modernist houses - a 7,000sq ft, steel-and-glass six-bedroom pad set well back in leafy Templewood Avenue and designed by former RIBA president Richard MacCormac. Henry lives there with his British girlfriend, Nicole Merry, a model and aspiring actress who starred with him in the 'Va-va-voom' Renault ad. Indeed, Henry's house is said to be remarkably similar to the one featured in the commercial. 'I like it here,' says Henry, who lives in the cosy, blue-chip village along with Arsenal team-mates Robert Pires, 29, Sylvain Wiltord, 28, and Patrick Vieira, 26. 'It's like a village in the middle of the city. I go to the cinema or out for a meal. I feel at home.'

Just a couple of streets away is Patrick Vieira's magnificent state-of-the-art bachelor pad bought off multimillionaire property developer David Pairs for £3m and hidden behind a high wall in a private front courtyard. The space-age house has an indoor pool in the atrium ingeniously supplied by a trickling stream (good feng shui) from the secluded roof garden. In the master bedroom, one wall is floor-to-ceiling glass, with a hidden plasma TV screen with surround sound, activated at the touch of a switch.

Token Swede and honorary French Gunner Freddie Ljungberg, 25, also lives nearby. He is currently moving from Netherhall Gardens to the dizzy heights of Mount Vernon, a luxurious new development billed by estate agents as 'the most exclusive flats in London' - a boast that is not entirely galvanised by the fact that ex-Spice Girl Emma Bunton also lives there.

When they are not humiliating every other team in the premiership, the Arsenal crew like to take Sunday brunch at The House on the Hill (34 Rosslyn Hill), hang out at the Everyman Cinema in Hollybush Vale, or go for a nightcap (non-alcoholic, of course) in the Appleton sisters' favourite wine bar, Toast, on the High Street. After midweek home matches, they head for the Italian San Daniele del Friuli (72 Highbury Park, N5) to wind down with manager Arsène Wenger.

Like Freddie Ljungberg, Arsenal's French dynamo Robert Pires is enamoured of the upmarket locale. 'It's the ideal place,' says Pires. 'Everything is open seven days a week and there's always something to do. I want to live here after football.'

The Italians: Chelsea

During his prime as Chelsea FC's player and manager in the late-Nineties, Gianluca Vialli was one hell of a dude. His off-duty style, which saw him handling the tricky, V-necked sweater with enviable aplomb and also incorporated sharp Milanese tailoring, aggressively cutaway-collar shirts, fat single-tone ties and a smart Prada briefcase, was a style which is now copied by every English footballer from Redknapp to Beckham. His audacious choice of address in a posh SW1 apartment was not only smart but also practical. Handy not only for Chelsea's Stamford Bridge ground on Fulham Road (a short hop on a Piaggio scooter), but also for San Lorenzo, his favourite restaurant, on Beauchamp Place, the shirt shop Interno 8 right opposite and the then newly opened La Perla trattoria on Old Brompton Road, owned at the time by his team-mate Roberto Di Matteo.

Nowadays, a Saturday-morning shopper visiting Brompton Cross, just a mile down the road from Stamford Bridge, would sometimes be hard-pressed to overhear an English voice above the more indigenous Eurotrash Italian spoken at every corner. Italian bankers with their crisp baseball caps, expensively oiled hair, immaculate Husky jackets and 400-quid loafers dominate the area, making it feel more like Corsa Como than Sloane Central. No wonder the likes of veteran Chelsea goal-poacher Gianfranco Zola, 36, manager Claudio Ranieri, goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini, 29, who lives with his fiancée Carola in Chelsea, and captain Marcel Desailly, 34, who lives in Knightsbridge, feel so at home here.

The modern-day Chelsea set are an infinitely more cultured and cosmopolitan bunch than, say, the West Ham or Charlton squad. Even Zola, from dirt-poor Sardinia, is learning to play the piano.

Like most Italians, they are also dreadful snobs. One gets the impression that they live in Chelsea because of its identifiably upscale address ('Yes, Mama! Near the King's Road!!!') that the folks back home will have heard of. They love the toffee-nosed passagietta of the Old Brompton Road on a Sunday afternoon and the cosy romance of Walton Street which has an elegant claustrophobia similar to bits of Venice.

'Here you have the opportunity of meeting people from so many places,' says Cudicini. 'It opens your mind.'

The Chelsea players do go partying (Frank Lampard to Knightsbridge's Wellington Club - though certain members of the Chelsea squad are unwelcome after defender John Terry and midfielder Jody Morris's recent, well-publicised fracas with a Wellington bouncer) but post-Vialli, drinking is kept to a dignified, Milanese minimum. Arguably, this kind of Euro professionalism has influenced the way all footballers in London now behave. As Roberto Di Matteo, who retired last year, put it: 'Sometimes I like to go to nightclubs. Just sometimes. When I go once, that is enough for a long time.'

Di Matteo now co-owns the restaurant Friends (6 Hollywood Road, SW10) just down the road from Stamford Bridge, which is proving a magnet for family-oriented Chelsea players such as Zola, who brings his wife Franca, and kids Andrea, 11, and Martina, ten, along. But San Lorenzo and Scalini (3 Walton Street, SW3) are the firm favourites with the players. At San Lorenzo, Princess Di's favourite diner, they even have a dish named after the Chelsea legend - grandly called Penne alla Vialli.

Unlike the British players, who tend to be somewhat clueless Sloane Street slaves when it comes to fashion, splurging money on unsuitable clobber, the Italians prefer the high quality and keen cut of lesser-known labels. Shirts come from Interno 8, shoes from Bottega Veneta, suits from Brioni. Snooty attitude, courtesy of Nero's Rome.