Sport and Cinema.com

 
 
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.

On Friday in Cape Town, South Africa soccer’s governing body, FIFA created the groupings that will provide the basis for the month-long tournament that begins June 11.

*32 Teams

*64 Matches

*48 matches in the first round

*Field gets cut in half with two teams from each group reaching the knockout round.

Earlier this week the last qualifying games in a two-year campaign concluded with the 32 teams now set for next summer’s World Cup in South Africa.

With the grouping to be conducted December 4th, here are the qualifiers by region:

North and Central America and Caribbean: Honduras, Mexico, United States

Now playing in theaters throughout America is a story about a British “soccer” coach, but while the backdrop of the mid-seventies football scene in England may be largely unfamiliar to the American audience, this is really a universal look at ego, ambition, power and personality.

The world’s greatest sports league, the English Premier League, began its latest campaign began over the weekend as Arsenal slammed Everton 6-1, Tottenham topped Liverpool 2-1, while Chelsea took care of Hull City 2-1 reigning champion Manchester United got into the winning column with a 1-0 victory over Birmingham City in the major games.