SOCCER: Alan Shearer has finally scored a European hat-trick. Newcastle United are back in serious contention in the Champions League. Next up it's Internazionale at the San Siro. The quarter-finals suddenly look a possibility.

Before that Chelsea are at St James' Park tomorrow lunchtime and the hosts go into the game four points ahead of the London club with a game in hand. Newcastle are unbeaten in the eight games since Wolves knocked them out of the FA Cup, since when they have conceded five goals and scored 15.

Wednesday's demolition of an admittedly poor Bayer Leverkusen merely added to the sense of black-and-white sap rising, and it led Gary Speed to say: "I am sure the Champions League is a competition that Newcastle could win one day."

Speed is too experienced to say something like that lightly. At 33, the Welshman is 11 years on from winning the league with Leeds United, and he did say "could" rather than "will". But it is a measure of the club's soaring confidence that he can talk in such terms.

"The Champions League is a competition the club deserves to be in because of the club's size and its fans; we will do our best to get them there next year," he continued. "With the quality of the players we have and the average age we have, if we can keep working hard and improving both as individuals and as a team, provided we keep the crop of players we have got together, the future is very exciting.

"We have to win in the San Siro, but we were in this position in the first phase and we beat Juventus here, so who is to say we cannot go on and beat Inter and then Barcelona?

"We have got to go for it. It is a fantastic position to be in and who says we cannot do it again?"

Not many in the north-east.

Yet Inter need only to draw. Barcelona would guarantee qualification for the last eight by beating Leverkusen at the Nou Camp, and it is hard to imagine that Inter will not win their final match, at Leverkusen. A draw and then a win would give them 11 points. A draw in Italy would mean that Newcastle could get a maximum of 10 and that would also necessitate beating Barcelona at St James'.

But such a downbeat note is out of keeping with the overall harmony.

"Whatever else does happen in this Champions League campaign, and whether or not we qualify for the last eight, we will be able to look back upon season 2002-03 as one of the most rewarding in the club's history," said club chairman Freddy Shepherd.

"We have by definition become one of the best 16 teams in Europe, and if we are in the Champions League again next August then this will have been one of Newcastle United's - and Bobby Robson's - finest years."

Guardian Service