LONDON — The best games, by common consent, are at Tabard Gardens, not far from the Elephant & Castle tube station, and a couple of miles southeast, on the AstroTurf field at the Damilola Taylor Center in Peckham.

They are where the standard is highest, the competition fiercest and the talent brightest. In the summer, especially, the matches can get even better, when some of the players who have left the housing projects of south London and gone on to reach the Premier League, or the divisions just below it, return. They come to remember where they began and to play with their friends. But most of all, they come to prove they can still cut it in the white heat of the cage.

London, increasingly, dominates English soccer’s landscape. For all the many millions of pounds spent by Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool, the season just ended with one London team, Chelsea, beating another, Tottenham, to the Premier League title, and then falling to a third, Arsenal, in the F.A. Cup final.