Sport and Cinema.com

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.

Authors Tobias Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim present an intriguing guide to a wide array of both complex and heretofore seemingly mundane topics that go far beyond the scoreboard to help fans get at the truths of sports

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 [...]

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.

For the first time in soccer’s history, its biggest event, the quadrennial World Cup, will be hosted by an African nation as South Africa will be the site of the 32-nation tournament.

As we begin 2010 it is time to consider which is the BEST sports movie from the first decade of the 21st Century.

There are some very good choices. Documentaries, by the way, like “Dogtown and Z-Boys” deserve their own column.

Here is the Top Ten:

The football world gathered in Zurich, Switzerland last Monday for the annual FIFA gala to announce not only the FIFA World Player of the Year, but also the FIFA/FIFPro World XI.

With over 50,000 professional footballers from around the world voting for their best starting XI of the last 12 months; there was huge competition for a place in the prestigious team of the year.