First there was Chelsea, then there was Arsenal and now there's, erm, City law firm Lewis Silkin (probably the first time those three names have appeared together).

The common theme here is football teams that have gone to Italy this season and returned with massive victories.

Where Lewis Silkin's achievement is especially impressive (relatively speaking) is that it put out a mixed team of men and women, and also had the biggest win (6-1), as opposed to Chelsea's 4-0 victory against Lazio and Arsenal's 5-1 against Inter Milan.

A team from the firm's employment and incentives department went to Milan to play local firm Toffoletto e Soci as part of an initiative to have lots of free trips abroad - sorry, build links between members of the Ius Laboris global alliance of employment and pensions law firms, of which Lewis Silkin and City pensions practice Sacker & Partners are the UK members (Lewis Silkin has already been to Argentina and lost).

Women footballers were much in the news last week with Sepp Blatter, the chief of world football's governing body, FIFA, urging them to wear 'more feminine' kits so as to improve the game's appeal.

We have been assured, however, that a team as switched on to sex discrimination as a bunch of employment lawyers never considered taking up such a suggestion.

(This article refers to images that appear in the printed edition, see [2004] Gazette, 22 January, 10).