Ball Watching
England matches continue to be an adventure. Well, they do for fans based in Hong Kong trying to see the games live, anyway.
As the past week's events regarding England's two World Cup qualifiers have proved, you can never be sure of anything when it comes to live football on the SAR's screens. This time last week it looked as if neither the Germany nor Finland matches would be shown on regular TV.
As usual, the sports bars around town came good for the match from Wembley thanks to an overseas satellite channel.
Then Cable did a U-turn on the Helsinki match, grabbing the rights at the eleventh hour to salvage some of the face they lost over the Saturday game.
In retrospect, and hindsight of course is 20-20, England fans who did not see the Germany game could regard it as an act of mercy by CABLE.
And those who saw the Finnish game probably wish they hadn't.
If it's any consolation the situation was even worse back in England itself as far as the latter game was concerned. That was because, for the first time in the UK, an England soccer international was available only on a pay-per-view basis, denying access to all but eight million homes with cable or digital equipment. And those fans who had the technology were required to pay ?10 (HK$115) for the privilege of seeing the humdrum fare. Apparently the Finnish FA made the rights decision on this occasion but the worry is that, although all England's remaining qualifiers will be available on the free-to-air BBC, a precedent may have been set.
We return to domestic fare this week and a full weekend of live action from England, Italy (on CABLE) and Spain (STAR Sports). The highlight is tomorrow night's Premier League game when champions Manchester United travel to Filbert Street to face surprise early leaders Leicester.
STAR Sports, normally but second-best to CABLE in live offerings, corrects that imbalance with a vengeance this week with wall-to-wall live coverage of the Asian Cup, which kicked off yesterday. Asian teams who have made an impact on the world stage include Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan and Iran and all those sides should are worth watching.
STAR also begin showing a highly promising new series this week, called Match of the Century.
The series, produced by STAR themselves and presented by John Dykes, has a faascinating central concept - selecting and profiling the all-time best XIs from both Europe and South America. Each of the 22 episodes will focus on one player and, as well as Pele, Beckenbauer, Charlton and Platini we will learn about lesser-known legends from earlier eras such as the player in the first two programmes this week - Spanish goalkeeper of the 1960s, Jose Angel Iribar. Episodes alternate between European and South American stars.
If you're a sucker for archive footage this show just has to be a winner.
