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The NFL will return to London next year with two of its top teams when the New England Patriots face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Wembley Stadium will host the October 25 affair, the third straight year the league has played a regular-season game there.

"The Buccaneers and Patriots have appeared in five of the last seven Super Bowls so we've got a really great match-up," Alistair Kirkwood, managing director of NFL UK, told Reuters in a telephone interview Monday.

"We have on our website (www.nfluk.com) 190,000 registered members and the Patriots are the most popular team by a reasonable distance."

Triple champion New England appeared in last season's Super Bowl and, with a 7-5 record this year, is in the hunt to return to the playoffs.

The Buccaneers, NFL champions in January 2003, are 9-3 and hold a share of the lead in the NFC South.

The New York Giants defeated the Miami Dolphins 13-10 in driving rain at Wembley in October 2007 en route to a stunning 17-14 upset of the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

Traveling OVERSEAS

Kirkwood said the victory by the Giants over the Dolphins proved traveling overseas had little effect on the rest of their season.

"It can be a positive having a game like this," he said. "When the Giants went to Phoenix for the Super Bowl at least half-a-dozen players said preparing in London, being in a kind of unusual environment ... was excellent preparation for Super Bowl week.

"So while the game offers new challenges it also offers real opportunities as well for the teams involved."

The New Orleans Saints defeated the San Diego Chargers 37-32 five weeks ago before 83,226 fans at Wembley. Both games in London have been sell-outs.

"We had over half-a-million applications for tickets for the Saints and Chargers," said Kirkwood. "I would expect we'd be looking at more than that this time around given the teams involved."

(Source: Reuters)