Sport and Cinema.com

Beyond the heightened level of players kicking and fans screaming, there are a lot of dynamics coming into play on and off the pitch as the Houston Dynamos take on the LA Galaxy in Major League Soccer’s Championship Match Sunday at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.

History

First, they are among the most successful franchises in league history. The 2011 MLS Cup marks the seventh time the Galaxy have reached the final match. They’re hoping seven is lucky enough to bring them their third title.

Wembley Stadium will be a rockin’ place Saturday night as some of the world’s greatest soccer talents go toe-to-toe that could make this a classic clash of the titans – Manchester United vs. Barcelona.

The curtain has fallen on a new and compelling “television film festival”. ESPN has just concluded its opening run of thirty engaging and provocative movies, premiering 14 months ago. Meticulous and sharply observed, this “30 for 30” project has been as ambitious an undertaking as anything the network has done.

Years of planning and wooing in an effort to earn the right to host soccer’s biggest event- the quadrennial World Cup culminated in Zurich today when FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter opened the envelopes to reveal Russia and Qatar as the winners based on a vote of the FIFA Executive Committee.

In what has to be considered a bit of an upset, Russia, which has never hosted the World Cup, with the support of powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (in absentia) and plenty of oil money to finance new stadiums, defeated England and combined bids from Spain/Portugal and Netherlands/Belgium to earn the right to be host for 2018.

 
 
On Sunday evening in Johannesburg’s Soccer City, one of the two greatest footballing nations never to have won the World Cup will be joining that exclusive club of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ as champions alongside Uruguay, Italy, Germany, Brazil, England, Argentina and France. That is correct, since the first tournament in 1930, only seven different nations [...]

For a team that was supposed to be in transition, experiencing a youth movement and without their captain, Germany, fresh off a dominating quarterfinal victory over Argentina, now faces Spain, the world’s number one ranked team in the semifinals Wednesday in Durban.

Not many experts picked these two to be facing each other at Green Point Stadium in Cape Town Tuesday for the right to advance to the championship match July 11th, but Uruguay and The Netherlands have certainly earned their way to this point.

Clint Eastwood directs this drama, based on a true story, that examines the question – What does Nelson Mandela do after becoming president of South Africa, a nation still racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid?

As part of its 2010 World Cup coverage and celebrating its thirty year anniversary with its 30 for 30 film series, ESPN debuts on Tuesday a film from Jeff and Michael Zimbalist.

To help promote its biggest marketing campaign for a single event, the American cable television giant will look to illuminating the sport’s stars to draw in viewers.

Here are some of the marquee names that will play throughout ESPN’s 230 hours plus coverage of all 64 matches.