London ? While the Giants and Dolphins were sliding around the turf at Wembley Stadium, the NFL had a cadre of about 40 volunteers working the stands doing other important work.

They were asking questions of the fans who attended the NFL’s first regular-season game outside of North America what they liked and didn’t like and, maybe most importantly, if they were aware of the meaning of the game they were watching.

The information from those surveys will be combined with data from interviews the league conducts with players, coaches and owners from the two teams later this week, and the results will help determine where next year’s international games will take place.

“We’ll get a lot of learning out of Wembley, and one of the questions we’ll ask ourselves is, having gotten that learning, should we reapply it back to Wembley again or not?” NFL vice president-international Mark Waller said Monday.

Waller said nothing about Sunday’s game – a rain-soaked, sloppy 13-10 win for the Giants – would change the NFL’s plan to play up to two international games next season, a plan owners approved last year. Wembley is a candidate to play host to one, as are stadiums in Germany, Mexico and Canada.

The location and the teams will likely be determined around Super Bowl time, and Waller said it wasn’t absolutely necessary to bring big-name teams such as the Giants and Dolphins to ensure a big crowd.

“One of the great things in our league is that in any season, all teams, or most teams, are competitive,” Waller said. “From a marketing perspective, it’s probably easier to have a couple of (high-profile) teams. But I think the popularity of our game is that, yes, we’d sell out any stadium with any teams.”

Almost certainly, however, the Giants and Dolphins are off the hook.

On Monday, as they had all week, the players smiled and spoke the party line, saying the long trip wasn’t that taxing and talking about the honor of being part of history and the NFL’s mission to expand its international presence.

“I would tell other players that things worked smoothly,” Giants quarterback Eli Manning said. “There weren’t any problems. It was just like you’re playing a normal game, except that you’re in a different country.”

Giants coach Tom Coughlin, who walked into Monday’s news conference with his boarding pass for the flight home in hand, once again would not get drawn into a conversation about the pros and cons of the NFL’s initiative.

“I will have the opportunity to visit with the commissioner and I’ll tell him exactly what I think,” Coughlin said. “Under this circumstance, the way it was done, it can be done. … But there are issues, no question about it.”