ESPN Classic

To many sports fans, the arrival of the year 2010 means that the count-down to football World Cup is well underway.

But that’s also true for rugby-lovers, with the oval ball’s showpiece tournament now just a matter of months away, in 2011.

To whet a few appetites, this month Classic recalls previous competitions’ greatest matches – including several from South Africa’s glory year of 1995.

Prime-time on Classic during the first fifteen days of February means a chance to pay tribute to the glorious game of cricket’s greatest-ever names.

It’s a sadly rare opportunity to see the likes of Barry Richards, Dennis Lillee and Malcolm Marshall at their brilliant best, with even rarer archive footage of W.G. Grace and Frank Worrell adding a further dash of spice.

A must-see season for cricket fans.

 The Currie Cup Final is South African club rugby union’s answer to English football’s F.A. Cup Final; the one match of the season which the entire country stops to watch.

Sometimes, as the law of averages would suggest, these games promise more than they deliver, but, just occasionally, an instant classic is created.

It’s those matches which ESPN re-plays this month, including 1998’s all-action encounter between the Blue Bulls and Western Province.

Admirers of English soccer are rewarded with hours of top-class action by Classic’s schedule this month;

with two different high-scoring matches featuring every week-night – before and after the cricket - this February.

Featured games, occasionally from rather unlikely teams, include Norwich’s ridiculously entertaining match with Middlesbrough from 2005, 
existing happily alongside the likes of Manchester United v Arsenal.

South African cricket lovers may well take a dim view of Kevin Pietersen’s decision to represent England...
but few, surely, can doubt the flamboyant batsman’s talent at the crease?

One of world cricket’s few genuine superstars was at his brilliant best for England during the summer of 2007 against the West Indies, and that spectacular series is recalled, in detail, on Classic, this month.

During the decade of the 1980s, Liverpool dominated English (and sometimes European) football to an extent which even Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United have failed to match, since.

The Reds were regularly captured in action by their local Granada TV franchise, and a full eight programmes of the team’s most memorable moments has been compiled from that original footage.

See soccer at its best, this month.

Last month, extraordinarily, Muhammad Ali – forever frozen in time as the fresh-faced fighter of the 1960s and ‘70s – reached the ripe old age of 68;

and, to celebrate, Classic shows again the three most action-packed compilations available of the star in his prime.

Enjoy again the sight of a sporting superstar in his pomp, as ESPN’s top American boxing experts offer viewers a ‘Ringside’ view.

He’s 31 years old, this month...
but ‘The Doctor’ already seems to have dominated his sport of Moto GP racing for more years than many might care to remember.

In fact, Rossi has only been riding the motor-cycle racing world’s mega-bikes since 2000, but has already racked up dozens of memorable performances.

Classic remembers his ten best, this month; from Donington in 2000 to Assen in ’07.

ONE GAME CHANGES EVERYTHING…
In the build up to this summer’s World Cup, ESPN Classic will be looking back over the most significant moments from the tournament’s illustrious history to whet your appetite for 2010. With its schedule packed full of official films, classic matches and documentaries, the sport fans number 1 choice for nostalgia will also be showing a selection of the most definitive World Cup matches to have ever taken place, 10 days prior to the start of South Africa. These were deemed to have ‘changed everything’…
VOTE FOR THE GAME THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING FOR YOU

Brazil v France, 1998 Final
File this one under ‘the strangest-ever World Cup Final’. France, urged on by a partisan home crowd, had somehow made it to the grand finale, despite not possessing a single in-form centre-forward in their entire squad. Red-hot favourites Brazil had the world’s best – Ronaldo – in theirs. But he wasn’t feeling very well...

Brazil v Italy, 1982
The phrase ‘all-time-classic’ is bandied around too often, these days. But this match is the real thing. Brazil’s 1982 squad mixed the quality of their 1970 winners with the thrilling abandon of 1958’s legends. They found defending dull, but Italy’s striker was so anonymous, he’d been nick-named ‘The Ghost’.

Italy v Germany, 1982 Final
Italy’s under-performing 1966 squad had famously been pelted with rotten fruit on their arrival back into Rome, and the same fate seemed set for their ’82 squad, during some dire early group matches. But then the team suddenly clicked, and they entered this Final against highly-fancied Germany in great form.

Argentina v England, 2002
This match was a personal revenge mission for David Beckham. Sent off during the same fixture in World Cup ’98, he’d waited four years to exorcise his demons. But it wouldn’t be easy, as he was effectively playing against Argentina’s finest with only one good foot...

Italy v France, 2006 Final
After the ’06 tournament’s flashy, early stars Argentina and Portugal had somehow got themselves eliminated, it was the old stagers – who mixed menace and muscle with skill and strength – who made it to the grand finale. And produced a tense, tough match...with a twist in its tail.
 

Netherlands v Brazil, 1974
The King is dead, long live the King. At Mexico 1970, Brazil had charmed the world with their winning mix of skill and flair. But, four years on, many of their stars now seemed past their best; and were increasingly reliant on savvy and slyness. The watching TV millions instead fell in love with Holland; and their talisman Johan Cruyff.

Netherlands v Germany, 1974 Final
The watching world almost dared Germany to lose this one. Tournament hosts and red-hot favourites, they’d breezed through the competition’s early rounds; led by their charismatic captain, Franz ‘Der Kaiser’ Beckenbauer. But Holland were arguably ‘total football’s most skilful team of all...

Brazil v England, 1970
A true classic, between two all-time-great sides. Although Brazil’s 1970 line-up is rightly remembered as one of football’s greatest-ever teams, England give them a real run for their money in Mexico’s lung-bursting mid-afternoon heat. Adding credence to the view that this side were actually better than the ’66 World Cup winners...

Brazil v Italy, 1970 Final
Everyone of a certain age remembers the closing twenty minutes of this match, when Brazil reached as close to poetry as perhaps has ever been seen on a football pitch. But, for its first three-quarters, this was actually quite a tight game. And Italy, having defeated Germany in an epic semi-final, more than played their part.

England v Cameroon, 1990
We all make mistakes. As these two teams lined up in the players’ tunnel, Cameroon’s squad broke out into tribal war chanting. Bobby Robson informed his troops to “Listen to them, boys. They’re terrified of you.” No they weren’t... Cue a quarter-final as dramatic as perhaps the World Cup has ever seen.

England v Germany, 1966 Final
Little-known fact; this was the very first football match ever beamed live to American TV viewers, and it made such an impression on a selection of them that they went on to create the North American Soccer League. The most dramatic Final ever; and proof that one single match can create an all-time hero.